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doyleIt’s so weird to write something and not automatically correct my speech patterns.
Title:Five Four Things That Never Happened to Allen Francis Doyle, Unless It Was In a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Author: Hathaway (doing my usual trick of switching pennames when writing Doyle-the-Angel-character)
Pairing: Doyle/various (slash)
Notes: my request for the Doyleathon II was for slash, AU and a crossover. Since I couldn’t pick a fandom, I scribbled fifteen male characters on bits of paper* and picked five of them. (This was before I realized the Fight Club bit would be nearly 2000 words on its own, which is why there are only four of these)
There may be just a *slight* element of crack to this fic. Also the Fight Club rules are from the book so may differ a bit from the movie.
1. Burgers and Porn and Angela’s Ashes
Wesley was hitting up his contacts at the Watchers’ Council, which was a Very Important Job. Angel and Gunn were scoping out the sewers for the nest, another Very Important Job. And Doyle and Cordelia were supposed to buy as many books about demonic London as they could find.
He couldn’t help but think that this was a less important job.
Winston Churchill, he rallied the troops with… a book! Eamon de Valera stood proud with… a book!
Didn’t sound just right.
After a while they split up; Cordelia was dying to skive off to buy shoes, he suspected, and he was happy to let her have that adventure by herself. He took the tube to Russell Square and wandered a bit around Bloomsbury, buying a few books at Waterstones and then getting lost in the labyrinths of the second-hand places.
Gay’s The Word didn’t have much in the way of guides to demonic hangouts – he checked, reasoning that nobody’d said they were just looking for straight demons – but he did pick up some interesting reading material for personal use. He’d have to be careful to keep the bags separate.
There was one last bookshop in the street. Black Books, the sign said, and the sorts of demons they were looking for tended more toward the green, as he recalled, but he went in anyway.
The man behind the desk – about Doyle’s age, rumpled suit, black hair that looked like a couple of starlings had been living in it and throwing some mad parties - flicked his cigarette in the direction of the door. “We’re closed.”
“Sign says you’re open.”
“Well, it’s telling lies. It’s a bad sign, and it’ll be made to sit in the naughty corner with a big bucket of sand on its head.”
Doyle sidled over the desk, intrigued by the accent. “Whereabouts are you from?”
Mr. Black, he presumed, closed his eyes as if in pain. “Oh, god, you’re from Ireland… look, no more talking to me, or else we’ll find out that you stole my rubber in primary school or your great-grandfather ate mine during the potato famine, and I couldn’t take that, I’m a fragile person.”
Doyle winced, and reminded himself that Brakkens were herbivores. “I don’t think you were at my school,” he said, because the charm offensive was usually a safe bet. “Think I would’ve remembered you. It’s Doyle, by the way.”
Black looked suspiciously at his outstretched hand. “Bernard Black. Look, do you want something?”
“Well,” he said, “yeah. Books. You got any?”
Bernard narrowed his eyes. “We’re not a funny race, you know,” he said, as Doyle went to check the likeliest-looking set of shelves. “The Irish are not natural comedians. Except Angela’s Ashes, that was a riotous fiesta of laughs.”
“I read that, yeah.” He flipped through a history of London’s sewage system. “ ’I had eleven brothers and seventy-nine sisters, and we all lived in the one bin and all we got to eat was a Terry’s chocolate orange a month because our ma couldn’t afford real fruit’.”
“ ‘And our da was hopeless because he was made out of soap and he smelled funny when it rained. Great days, though, till they all died of Nile fever.’ ”
“Grand days,” Doyle agreed, enjoying himself. “How much for this?” The sewage book might be useful; anyway, there was nothing else, and he wanted to buy something.
“Two pound,” Bernard said, and then shook his head. “Just… take it with you. Save me opening the till.”
“Right, then. Thanks.”
“Right.”
Bernard said something that sounded like “Dyawaney?”
“Sorry?”
“I just said did you want tea,” Bernard said, looking as defensive and self-conscious as if he’d suggested they go upstairs for a mid-morning quickie. “I mean, I was making it anyway. Because I make tea. All the time. So since I was making it anyway and not for special or anything, if you wanted some, you could have some.”
“I wish I could,” he started, sincerely, but Bernard was already going back to his book.
“No, that’s fine. I’m sure you have lots of important things to do with your book about sewers. Turn the sign round on your way out.”
He had enough experience of huffy, antisocial people to not be put off. Of course, they tended to be vampires – well, Angel – and as far as he knew, this guy was human. Although the hair… “Listen, I’ve got stuff to do at the minute but I’m in London a couple of days, do you want to maybe go out somewhere?”
Bernard looking warily over the top of his novel. “No. I don’t go out. Tried it once, I didn’t like it very much. It’s all burgers and pornography out there.”
Doyle grinned. “What if I bring the burgers and porn to you?”
2. Did It Hurt When You Fell From Heaven, and Other Chat-Up Lines Not Suitable For Use When One’s Drinking Partner Is a Bona Fide Angelic Being
“You’re an angel, then.”
“That finally sinking in, is it? For the fifth, and hopefully final, time, I’m the Voice.”
“Right,” Doyle said carefully, “and this is the Voice of God we’re talking about. You’ve actually got the direct line to Himself.”
“Glad we’ve cleared that up.”
“So if God’s real, and He’s really watching over us all the time and stuff, and you’re his top man…” Doyle tried to think of something important to ask, something that would lend meaning to his life and give him some insight into the human condition, and all he could come up with was, “Could you not have picked yourself a better name than Megatron?”
“It’s Metatron,” the Metatron said sourly. “And what’s wrong with it?”
Doyle scratched his nose. “I’m not meaning to be offensive, pal, but it does make you sound a bit like a Transformer.”
He snorted. “You sound a bit like a fucking tosser, but I’m not holding it against you.”
“Are angels allowed to swear?” he asked, fascinated.
“Much as we like.” He sipped a mouthful of his whiskey and spat it into the empty glass. “Drink, no, unfortunately.”
Doyle leaned across the table, dropping his voice. “What about, y’know, the other? Women or men or whatever?”
Metatron had a face on him like he was forever sucking lemons, but it suddenly looked like he’d bitten down. Hard. “Not a chance. The spirit may be willing but the flesh is non-existent.”
His own flesh shrank a bit in sympathetic horror. “So you can’t… not ever?”
“Bright spark, aren’t you?” he sighed. “Yes, I can see why you got picked for this job.”
Ah, now they were getting back to the crux of this thing, so to speak. “About that,” Doyle said, “are you sure you’ve got the right guy? You’ve not got me confused with another Doyle? Very popular for emigration, America, there must be loads of us.”
“Hmm, let me see.” He tapped his chin. “Thirty-ish white male, short, non-descript sort of face, Irish accent… oh, and half demon who gets visions of people in distress. You’re absolutely right, there’s millions of people I could’ve confused you with.”
He held up his hands, surrendering. “Okay, just checking. Already said I was in.” When it came down to it, there were some bosses you didn’t tell to go and fuck themselves.
The Metatron finished his drink in a couple more swigs and spits. “Good. Go and talk to the CEO and wait for instructions.” He stood to leave.
“What’s it like?” Doyle asked. “Being an angel?”
Metatron shrugged. “S’alright.”
It is in your hole, Doyle thought.
The business card the Metatron had given him looked pretty fancy. Doyle ran his thumb over the logo, an embossed W&H. “This fella you want me to see,” he said, “what’s he? Another angel?”
The Voice smirked. “Funny you should ask…”
3. That’s Between Me and My God and My Cows
He couldn’t help it. The farmer-guy demanded to know what the hell Doyle was doing hanging round with his son, and it didn’t matter that there was an innocent explanation. Doyle suddenly saw a shotgun barrel in his immediate future and instinct took over.
“I never knew he was under eighteen!” he blurted out. “Christ, have you seen him, he looks about twenty-eight...”
This was, he decided as he legged it over the field and out of the farm, barely keeping ahead of Clark’s irate father, possibly the wrong thing to say.
*
Clark came to his motel room later that night, full of apologies and concern and just a couple of hints that he’d warned Doyle it’d be a bad idea to talk to his parents.
Doyle wanted to stand his ground and say I’m the one who’s the guide, here, and your mum and dad need to know about this Jor-El thing because frankly I’m out of my depth, and when you’re looking to me to keep us both afloat that’s bad. And not to beat this water metaphor to death, but the sharks are circling, and I know what you’re like and you’ll get your arm bit off because you’re going ‘oh, look at the nice dolphin, pat pat pat.’ And I know Jonathan’s not your real dad but he signed on for all this and I didn’t, so I think I’ll leave it to him to sort, okay?
Only you couldn’t say that to Clark, because he looked at you with those big, dopey, trusting eyes and you knew he was only thinking the best of you. It was stupid, Doyle knew, and probably a bit blasphemous as well, but the rare time when he thought about God and Jesus and all that stuff he pictured himself dying and being called for Judgement, and being looked at with just that expression and hearing “I’m not angry, Francis, I’m disappointed…”
So he found himself saying sorry, saying he wouldn’t try and talk to the Kents again. “You should, though,” he said, knowing Clark wouldn’t.
“Mom’s got enough on her mind with the baby. I can’t lay that on them, too.”
Doyle cringed under the sheer earnestness of the gaze. “Look, I haven’t had any visions,” he said. “It’s quiet, why don’t you go and see if,” Lex, “Lana fancies going somewhere? You deserve the break. Plus if your dad follows you out here he’ll think we’re shagging for definite and then I’ll be dead.”
Clark’s mouth dropped open. “My dad what?”
Oh yeah, he’d forgot to say that bit.
4. You Are Not a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake. Sorry About That.
So anyway, he woke up after one particularly long bender and the sign on the station wall said he was in Delaware.
Where the fuck was Delaware when it was at home, Doyle wondered, and passed out again.
A couple of hours later, irritated out of sleep by people bustling through the station and with the lines of the bench pressed into his face, he stared at the sign again. After a bit of sounding out the name and some wilful ignoring of spelling he managed to convince himself that he’d found his way into a magical world full of delis, and staggered off to hunter-gather some breakfast.
*
He’d had worse mornings after. The café he found did him tea, stewed and with enough sugar for the spoon to stand up by itself, and he dropped a handful of coins on the counter and hoped the waitress could count better than him.
He drunk his tea in a moody, hungover haze, occasionally broken by the thought that he would need to either find a place to stay or start making his way back to California. He only had – he spread the money over the table to count it out, squinting at the pictures of dead Presidents – seventeen dollars and thirty-four cents. His brain was too foggy to even try to work out how much that was in real money.
The waiter came with a refill. He was good-looking, in a generic American way, made a bit more interesting by the black eye, the swollen lip. Lent his face a nice sort of antisymmetry. “Anything else?”
“I’m all right, ta.”
Doyle drank his tea and wondered what the hell he was going to do.
*
A couple more nights at the Station Bench Hilton, a couple more days wandering about the city and thinking about Harry. He couldn’t fault her for walking out; she’d stuck with him years longer than most would have, put up with his demon side and the drinking. She’d thought she could save him, and he’d always known she’d be out the door once she caught on to her mistake.
He was down to his last two dollars. Not enough to buy anything to eat, but he got coffee at his new regular place and his new bestest waiter-friend Steve let him have some chips for free. Doyle didn’t like taking charity, but they were skinny wee American chips so they didn’t count.
Steve’s eye had gone down a bit. While he was closing up he started talking, in a roundabout way, about how sometimes people got into trouble, got lost, and that there was something that could make it all better.
Doyle eyed him suspiciously. He was either a rogue psychiatrist or an evangelical Bible-basher; he felt his free chips turn to communion wafers in his stomach.
“There’s a place I go Tuesday nights,” Steve said. “You should come along.”
“I’m not much for the whole kumbaya and hugs all round thing.”
“Oh, it’s not a support group.” His grin was full of broken teeth. “Not exactly.”
*
The bar’s basement looked a bit like a big garage, but it smelled of stale fags and beer. Doyle would lay money that if he changed his face a minute he’d smell blood, too. He could see it, dark smears on the concrete that didn’t smell like oil.
There were thirty, forty men, aged anywhere between nineteen and sixty; mostly white, some of them brick-shithouse-bruisers, with a couple who were smaller like him. A lot were shirtless already. Most of the rest were stripping to the waist.
The man beside Doyle wasn’t stripping. He had a big, friendly smile, and an impressive set of breasts. “First time?” he whispered.
“Um.” Don’t stare at the chest, don’t stare at the… “Yeah. Thought this place sounded like a laugh.”
“I’m Bob.”
He shook the clammy, pudgy hand. “Doyle. Nice to… whatever.”
Bob looked around them and leaned in to ask, “So who do you want to fight?”
“Oh, we’re going to fight?” A light shone down from the heavens and comprehension dawned. It wasn’t a particularly rough sex-ring, then.
There was a shift in the atmosphere, suddenly. People had been making chit-chat; now they were moving into a wide circle, all eyes on the man in the centre.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Welcome to fight club.”
*
The first rule of fight club was that you didn’t talk about fight club.
Doyle looked around at Steve, who wouldn’t meet his eye. He’d probably have to write lines or something if he got told on.
The second rule of fight club was that you didn’t talk about fight club.
Understandable, he thought. You’d had a few, you’d left it till the night before to write up the rules for your underground boxing den slash seething pit of barely restrained homoeroticism, it was forgivable that you’d slip up and repeat yourself.
The third rule of fight club was two men to a fight. The fourth rule was one fight at a time.
Doyle thought about asking if he could get special dispensation for being a third of the size of some of these lads.
The fifth rule of fight club was no shirt, no shoes.
No shirt because it gives you something to grab onto, but as well as that it’ll keep girls from sneaking into the treehouse to see what they’re up to…
The sixth rule was that if somebody went limp or tapped the ground, the fight was over.
The man in the middle of the circle smiled. It was a look that belonged on a scrapyard dog. “And the final rule.” And he looked right at Doyle. “If it’s your first night at fight club… you have to fight.”
Ah.
That’d mean him, then.
*
Everything hurt. His face felt like it had met a door at sixty miles an hour. He’d heard his elbow crunch and then there’d been a screaming searing pain in his arm and it wasn’t going away. He staggered out into the carpark with the rest of the club and as the cool air hit his face he started to laugh. This whole thing was insane.
“Great, huh?” Steve slapped him on the back, then helped him stand up again. “You fight good, for somebody who’s...”
He waited for him to commit to ‘Irish’ or ‘short’, either of which would have required another fight just for the honour of the thing, but Steve said, “new. You need a ride?”
“Think I’ll stay here a bit.” The station was only two streets away, and this way he could collapse in private.
People trickled away, singly and in groups, till he was left by himself. He eased onto the wall, groaning. His arm was snapped back into place easy enough – there were the up sides to being half demon, he’d admit that – but his face was going to hate him for a good while.
The top man, the rule-reader, stepped forward into the circle of the streetlight.
“Going to be out of action for a couple of days at least,” Doyle apologized, “so if you’re looking another fight, you could maybe catch up with Steve, he looked like he was raring to go a few more rounds.”
“You were good,” he said. “Better than most guys, their first fight.” He paused, looking stuck for something to say. It was weird; back there he’d had bags of confidence, king of the castle. Now he was all quiet near-monotone voice, awkward slump of a posture. Some people just thrived in the spotlight, Doyle supposed. “You’re trying to hit bottom.”
They were back at the homoeroticism again, till Doyle worked out what he meant. “Not trying to. Woke up in the station and bottom found me.” That was just an unfortunate phrasing, however you sliced it.
“It was a woman.” Foregone conclusion, not a question.
“Ex-wife,” he admitted, and changed the subject. “You run this show, then.”
He nodded, kicking at an empty bottle on the ground. “I started it, me and Tyler.” He looked around them, as if this Tyler might appear out of the darkness. “Guess he went home already.”
He sounded bitter, disappointed, not too surprised. Some more of the details filled in. Tyler was the boyfriend, no doubt the Hollywood-pretty platinum blond who’d been attached to his side the whole night.
“So have you got a name, or am I not allowed to talk about it?”
He used to play poker a bit. One of the things you were meant to look for was how people’s eyes moved when they bluffed. When somebody was telling the truth, they looked right (so he’d been told) because memory was in the right bit of your brain. When it was lies, they looked left. Or maybe it was the other way around. Doyle had never been a successful gambler. But this guy’s eyes went left, then right, and then he said, “I’m Jack.”
He’d heard Bob call him Cornelius. Jack was better. Jack was a name you could live with.
“You’re from Ireland,” Jack said. “I’ve never been there. It’s supposed to be peaceful.”
“Not your sort of scene, then.”
Little smile. “You should’ve known me before I met Tyler.”
Before you met Tyler you were peaceful? Doesn’t sound so bad, he started to say, and then he thought of dogs again, his aunt’s docile chocolate lab that had never so much as barked at anyone, even his cousins that spent half their lives tormenting it, and then one day someone had petted it and lost three fingers…
“Anyway,” he said, sliding off the wall, “your club’s interesting and all and, yeah, I forgot my worries for a bit, but…” You’re a bit scary and I think you, the collective you as well as the you in particular, think you’re bigger and cleverer than you are and you’ve got some serious problems with women and they’re not the ones you think. “Just don’t think it’s for me.”
Which should have been the end of it, except he woke up the next morning feeling simultaneously like shit and better than he had in weeks. Steve turned up a job offer, one of the guys from the club looking for a bouncer. He thought, well, he’d stick it out a couple of weeks. And his boss was in fight club so he had to go along, just for politeness’ sake, and it wasn’t like he had to fight, seeing as he wasn’t new any more.
But he ended up putting his name down, anyway.
It was Jack, he finally realized; something about him, the way he believed in what he was saying and he believed it so much that you couldn’t laugh any more, not even at the first rule is second rule is. He was a fucking psycho and he was headed for a fall, and it was going to be a headfirst dive off the end of the world, and everybody knew. And once you worked it out you couldn’t stop watching him.
People stayed because they fell in love with Jack, Cornelius, whatever his name was. But by the time Doyle worked that out, he couldn’t look away.
* the other 11, for the record: Stuart Jones, Queer As Folk UK. Remus Lupin, Harry Potter. Fry, Futurama. Dougal MacGuire, Father Ted. Destruction, Sandman. Dominic Monaghan, err… real person. Devon MacLeish, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jack Sparrow, PoTC. Julian Sark, Alias. Brian Steadman, Teachers. Crowley, Good Omens.
Title:
Author: Hathaway (doing my usual trick of switching pennames when writing Doyle-the-Angel-character)
Pairing: Doyle/various (slash)
Notes: my request for the Doyleathon II was for slash, AU and a crossover. Since I couldn’t pick a fandom, I scribbled fifteen male characters on bits of paper* and picked five of them. (This was before I realized the Fight Club bit would be nearly 2000 words on its own, which is why there are only four of these)
There may be just a *slight* element of crack to this fic. Also the Fight Club rules are from the book so may differ a bit from the movie.
1. Burgers and Porn and Angela’s Ashes
Wesley was hitting up his contacts at the Watchers’ Council, which was a Very Important Job. Angel and Gunn were scoping out the sewers for the nest, another Very Important Job. And Doyle and Cordelia were supposed to buy as many books about demonic London as they could find.
He couldn’t help but think that this was a less important job.
Winston Churchill, he rallied the troops with… a book! Eamon de Valera stood proud with… a book!
Didn’t sound just right.
After a while they split up; Cordelia was dying to skive off to buy shoes, he suspected, and he was happy to let her have that adventure by herself. He took the tube to Russell Square and wandered a bit around Bloomsbury, buying a few books at Waterstones and then getting lost in the labyrinths of the second-hand places.
Gay’s The Word didn’t have much in the way of guides to demonic hangouts – he checked, reasoning that nobody’d said they were just looking for straight demons – but he did pick up some interesting reading material for personal use. He’d have to be careful to keep the bags separate.
There was one last bookshop in the street. Black Books, the sign said, and the sorts of demons they were looking for tended more toward the green, as he recalled, but he went in anyway.
The man behind the desk – about Doyle’s age, rumpled suit, black hair that looked like a couple of starlings had been living in it and throwing some mad parties - flicked his cigarette in the direction of the door. “We’re closed.”
“Sign says you’re open.”
“Well, it’s telling lies. It’s a bad sign, and it’ll be made to sit in the naughty corner with a big bucket of sand on its head.”
Doyle sidled over the desk, intrigued by the accent. “Whereabouts are you from?”
Mr. Black, he presumed, closed his eyes as if in pain. “Oh, god, you’re from Ireland… look, no more talking to me, or else we’ll find out that you stole my rubber in primary school or your great-grandfather ate mine during the potato famine, and I couldn’t take that, I’m a fragile person.”
Doyle winced, and reminded himself that Brakkens were herbivores. “I don’t think you were at my school,” he said, because the charm offensive was usually a safe bet. “Think I would’ve remembered you. It’s Doyle, by the way.”
Black looked suspiciously at his outstretched hand. “Bernard Black. Look, do you want something?”
“Well,” he said, “yeah. Books. You got any?”
Bernard narrowed his eyes. “We’re not a funny race, you know,” he said, as Doyle went to check the likeliest-looking set of shelves. “The Irish are not natural comedians. Except Angela’s Ashes, that was a riotous fiesta of laughs.”
“I read that, yeah.” He flipped through a history of London’s sewage system. “ ’I had eleven brothers and seventy-nine sisters, and we all lived in the one bin and all we got to eat was a Terry’s chocolate orange a month because our ma couldn’t afford real fruit’.”
“ ‘And our da was hopeless because he was made out of soap and he smelled funny when it rained. Great days, though, till they all died of Nile fever.’ ”
“Grand days,” Doyle agreed, enjoying himself. “How much for this?” The sewage book might be useful; anyway, there was nothing else, and he wanted to buy something.
“Two pound,” Bernard said, and then shook his head. “Just… take it with you. Save me opening the till.”
“Right, then. Thanks.”
“Right.”
Bernard said something that sounded like “Dyawaney?”
“Sorry?”
“I just said did you want tea,” Bernard said, looking as defensive and self-conscious as if he’d suggested they go upstairs for a mid-morning quickie. “I mean, I was making it anyway. Because I make tea. All the time. So since I was making it anyway and not for special or anything, if you wanted some, you could have some.”
“I wish I could,” he started, sincerely, but Bernard was already going back to his book.
“No, that’s fine. I’m sure you have lots of important things to do with your book about sewers. Turn the sign round on your way out.”
He had enough experience of huffy, antisocial people to not be put off. Of course, they tended to be vampires – well, Angel – and as far as he knew, this guy was human. Although the hair… “Listen, I’ve got stuff to do at the minute but I’m in London a couple of days, do you want to maybe go out somewhere?”
Bernard looking warily over the top of his novel. “No. I don’t go out. Tried it once, I didn’t like it very much. It’s all burgers and pornography out there.”
Doyle grinned. “What if I bring the burgers and porn to you?”
2. Did It Hurt When You Fell From Heaven, and Other Chat-Up Lines Not Suitable For Use When One’s Drinking Partner Is a Bona Fide Angelic Being
“You’re an angel, then.”
“That finally sinking in, is it? For the fifth, and hopefully final, time, I’m the Voice.”
“Right,” Doyle said carefully, “and this is the Voice of God we’re talking about. You’ve actually got the direct line to Himself.”
“Glad we’ve cleared that up.”
“So if God’s real, and He’s really watching over us all the time and stuff, and you’re his top man…” Doyle tried to think of something important to ask, something that would lend meaning to his life and give him some insight into the human condition, and all he could come up with was, “Could you not have picked yourself a better name than Megatron?”
“It’s Metatron,” the Metatron said sourly. “And what’s wrong with it?”
Doyle scratched his nose. “I’m not meaning to be offensive, pal, but it does make you sound a bit like a Transformer.”
He snorted. “You sound a bit like a fucking tosser, but I’m not holding it against you.”
“Are angels allowed to swear?” he asked, fascinated.
“Much as we like.” He sipped a mouthful of his whiskey and spat it into the empty glass. “Drink, no, unfortunately.”
Doyle leaned across the table, dropping his voice. “What about, y’know, the other? Women or men or whatever?”
Metatron had a face on him like he was forever sucking lemons, but it suddenly looked like he’d bitten down. Hard. “Not a chance. The spirit may be willing but the flesh is non-existent.”
His own flesh shrank a bit in sympathetic horror. “So you can’t… not ever?”
“Bright spark, aren’t you?” he sighed. “Yes, I can see why you got picked for this job.”
Ah, now they were getting back to the crux of this thing, so to speak. “About that,” Doyle said, “are you sure you’ve got the right guy? You’ve not got me confused with another Doyle? Very popular for emigration, America, there must be loads of us.”
“Hmm, let me see.” He tapped his chin. “Thirty-ish white male, short, non-descript sort of face, Irish accent… oh, and half demon who gets visions of people in distress. You’re absolutely right, there’s millions of people I could’ve confused you with.”
He held up his hands, surrendering. “Okay, just checking. Already said I was in.” When it came down to it, there were some bosses you didn’t tell to go and fuck themselves.
The Metatron finished his drink in a couple more swigs and spits. “Good. Go and talk to the CEO and wait for instructions.” He stood to leave.
“What’s it like?” Doyle asked. “Being an angel?”
Metatron shrugged. “S’alright.”
It is in your hole, Doyle thought.
The business card the Metatron had given him looked pretty fancy. Doyle ran his thumb over the logo, an embossed W&H. “This fella you want me to see,” he said, “what’s he? Another angel?”
The Voice smirked. “Funny you should ask…”
3. That’s Between Me and My God and My Cows
He couldn’t help it. The farmer-guy demanded to know what the hell Doyle was doing hanging round with his son, and it didn’t matter that there was an innocent explanation. Doyle suddenly saw a shotgun barrel in his immediate future and instinct took over.
“I never knew he was under eighteen!” he blurted out. “Christ, have you seen him, he looks about twenty-eight...”
This was, he decided as he legged it over the field and out of the farm, barely keeping ahead of Clark’s irate father, possibly the wrong thing to say.
*
Clark came to his motel room later that night, full of apologies and concern and just a couple of hints that he’d warned Doyle it’d be a bad idea to talk to his parents.
Doyle wanted to stand his ground and say I’m the one who’s the guide, here, and your mum and dad need to know about this Jor-El thing because frankly I’m out of my depth, and when you’re looking to me to keep us both afloat that’s bad. And not to beat this water metaphor to death, but the sharks are circling, and I know what you’re like and you’ll get your arm bit off because you’re going ‘oh, look at the nice dolphin, pat pat pat.’ And I know Jonathan’s not your real dad but he signed on for all this and I didn’t, so I think I’ll leave it to him to sort, okay?
Only you couldn’t say that to Clark, because he looked at you with those big, dopey, trusting eyes and you knew he was only thinking the best of you. It was stupid, Doyle knew, and probably a bit blasphemous as well, but the rare time when he thought about God and Jesus and all that stuff he pictured himself dying and being called for Judgement, and being looked at with just that expression and hearing “I’m not angry, Francis, I’m disappointed…”
So he found himself saying sorry, saying he wouldn’t try and talk to the Kents again. “You should, though,” he said, knowing Clark wouldn’t.
“Mom’s got enough on her mind with the baby. I can’t lay that on them, too.”
Doyle cringed under the sheer earnestness of the gaze. “Look, I haven’t had any visions,” he said. “It’s quiet, why don’t you go and see if,” Lex, “Lana fancies going somewhere? You deserve the break. Plus if your dad follows you out here he’ll think we’re shagging for definite and then I’ll be dead.”
Clark’s mouth dropped open. “My dad what?”
Oh yeah, he’d forgot to say that bit.
4. You Are Not a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake. Sorry About That.
So anyway, he woke up after one particularly long bender and the sign on the station wall said he was in Delaware.
Where the fuck was Delaware when it was at home, Doyle wondered, and passed out again.
A couple of hours later, irritated out of sleep by people bustling through the station and with the lines of the bench pressed into his face, he stared at the sign again. After a bit of sounding out the name and some wilful ignoring of spelling he managed to convince himself that he’d found his way into a magical world full of delis, and staggered off to hunter-gather some breakfast.
*
He’d had worse mornings after. The café he found did him tea, stewed and with enough sugar for the spoon to stand up by itself, and he dropped a handful of coins on the counter and hoped the waitress could count better than him.
He drunk his tea in a moody, hungover haze, occasionally broken by the thought that he would need to either find a place to stay or start making his way back to California. He only had – he spread the money over the table to count it out, squinting at the pictures of dead Presidents – seventeen dollars and thirty-four cents. His brain was too foggy to even try to work out how much that was in real money.
The waiter came with a refill. He was good-looking, in a generic American way, made a bit more interesting by the black eye, the swollen lip. Lent his face a nice sort of antisymmetry. “Anything else?”
“I’m all right, ta.”
Doyle drank his tea and wondered what the hell he was going to do.
*
A couple more nights at the Station Bench Hilton, a couple more days wandering about the city and thinking about Harry. He couldn’t fault her for walking out; she’d stuck with him years longer than most would have, put up with his demon side and the drinking. She’d thought she could save him, and he’d always known she’d be out the door once she caught on to her mistake.
He was down to his last two dollars. Not enough to buy anything to eat, but he got coffee at his new regular place and his new bestest waiter-friend Steve let him have some chips for free. Doyle didn’t like taking charity, but they were skinny wee American chips so they didn’t count.
Steve’s eye had gone down a bit. While he was closing up he started talking, in a roundabout way, about how sometimes people got into trouble, got lost, and that there was something that could make it all better.
Doyle eyed him suspiciously. He was either a rogue psychiatrist or an evangelical Bible-basher; he felt his free chips turn to communion wafers in his stomach.
“There’s a place I go Tuesday nights,” Steve said. “You should come along.”
“I’m not much for the whole kumbaya and hugs all round thing.”
“Oh, it’s not a support group.” His grin was full of broken teeth. “Not exactly.”
*
The bar’s basement looked a bit like a big garage, but it smelled of stale fags and beer. Doyle would lay money that if he changed his face a minute he’d smell blood, too. He could see it, dark smears on the concrete that didn’t smell like oil.
There were thirty, forty men, aged anywhere between nineteen and sixty; mostly white, some of them brick-shithouse-bruisers, with a couple who were smaller like him. A lot were shirtless already. Most of the rest were stripping to the waist.
The man beside Doyle wasn’t stripping. He had a big, friendly smile, and an impressive set of breasts. “First time?” he whispered.
“Um.” Don’t stare at the chest, don’t stare at the… “Yeah. Thought this place sounded like a laugh.”
“I’m Bob.”
He shook the clammy, pudgy hand. “Doyle. Nice to… whatever.”
Bob looked around them and leaned in to ask, “So who do you want to fight?”
“Oh, we’re going to fight?” A light shone down from the heavens and comprehension dawned. It wasn’t a particularly rough sex-ring, then.
There was a shift in the atmosphere, suddenly. People had been making chit-chat; now they were moving into a wide circle, all eyes on the man in the centre.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Welcome to fight club.”
*
The first rule of fight club was that you didn’t talk about fight club.
Doyle looked around at Steve, who wouldn’t meet his eye. He’d probably have to write lines or something if he got told on.
The second rule of fight club was that you didn’t talk about fight club.
Understandable, he thought. You’d had a few, you’d left it till the night before to write up the rules for your underground boxing den slash seething pit of barely restrained homoeroticism, it was forgivable that you’d slip up and repeat yourself.
The third rule of fight club was two men to a fight. The fourth rule was one fight at a time.
Doyle thought about asking if he could get special dispensation for being a third of the size of some of these lads.
The fifth rule of fight club was no shirt, no shoes.
No shirt because it gives you something to grab onto, but as well as that it’ll keep girls from sneaking into the treehouse to see what they’re up to…
The sixth rule was that if somebody went limp or tapped the ground, the fight was over.
The man in the middle of the circle smiled. It was a look that belonged on a scrapyard dog. “And the final rule.” And he looked right at Doyle. “If it’s your first night at fight club… you have to fight.”
Ah.
That’d mean him, then.
*
Everything hurt. His face felt like it had met a door at sixty miles an hour. He’d heard his elbow crunch and then there’d been a screaming searing pain in his arm and it wasn’t going away. He staggered out into the carpark with the rest of the club and as the cool air hit his face he started to laugh. This whole thing was insane.
“Great, huh?” Steve slapped him on the back, then helped him stand up again. “You fight good, for somebody who’s...”
He waited for him to commit to ‘Irish’ or ‘short’, either of which would have required another fight just for the honour of the thing, but Steve said, “new. You need a ride?”
“Think I’ll stay here a bit.” The station was only two streets away, and this way he could collapse in private.
People trickled away, singly and in groups, till he was left by himself. He eased onto the wall, groaning. His arm was snapped back into place easy enough – there were the up sides to being half demon, he’d admit that – but his face was going to hate him for a good while.
The top man, the rule-reader, stepped forward into the circle of the streetlight.
“Going to be out of action for a couple of days at least,” Doyle apologized, “so if you’re looking another fight, you could maybe catch up with Steve, he looked like he was raring to go a few more rounds.”
“You were good,” he said. “Better than most guys, their first fight.” He paused, looking stuck for something to say. It was weird; back there he’d had bags of confidence, king of the castle. Now he was all quiet near-monotone voice, awkward slump of a posture. Some people just thrived in the spotlight, Doyle supposed. “You’re trying to hit bottom.”
They were back at the homoeroticism again, till Doyle worked out what he meant. “Not trying to. Woke up in the station and bottom found me.” That was just an unfortunate phrasing, however you sliced it.
“It was a woman.” Foregone conclusion, not a question.
“Ex-wife,” he admitted, and changed the subject. “You run this show, then.”
He nodded, kicking at an empty bottle on the ground. “I started it, me and Tyler.” He looked around them, as if this Tyler might appear out of the darkness. “Guess he went home already.”
He sounded bitter, disappointed, not too surprised. Some more of the details filled in. Tyler was the boyfriend, no doubt the Hollywood-pretty platinum blond who’d been attached to his side the whole night.
“So have you got a name, or am I not allowed to talk about it?”
He used to play poker a bit. One of the things you were meant to look for was how people’s eyes moved when they bluffed. When somebody was telling the truth, they looked right (so he’d been told) because memory was in the right bit of your brain. When it was lies, they looked left. Or maybe it was the other way around. Doyle had never been a successful gambler. But this guy’s eyes went left, then right, and then he said, “I’m Jack.”
He’d heard Bob call him Cornelius. Jack was better. Jack was a name you could live with.
“You’re from Ireland,” Jack said. “I’ve never been there. It’s supposed to be peaceful.”
“Not your sort of scene, then.”
Little smile. “You should’ve known me before I met Tyler.”
Before you met Tyler you were peaceful? Doesn’t sound so bad, he started to say, and then he thought of dogs again, his aunt’s docile chocolate lab that had never so much as barked at anyone, even his cousins that spent half their lives tormenting it, and then one day someone had petted it and lost three fingers…
“Anyway,” he said, sliding off the wall, “your club’s interesting and all and, yeah, I forgot my worries for a bit, but…” You’re a bit scary and I think you, the collective you as well as the you in particular, think you’re bigger and cleverer than you are and you’ve got some serious problems with women and they’re not the ones you think. “Just don’t think it’s for me.”
Which should have been the end of it, except he woke up the next morning feeling simultaneously like shit and better than he had in weeks. Steve turned up a job offer, one of the guys from the club looking for a bouncer. He thought, well, he’d stick it out a couple of weeks. And his boss was in fight club so he had to go along, just for politeness’ sake, and it wasn’t like he had to fight, seeing as he wasn’t new any more.
But he ended up putting his name down, anyway.
It was Jack, he finally realized; something about him, the way he believed in what he was saying and he believed it so much that you couldn’t laugh any more, not even at the first rule is second rule is. He was a fucking psycho and he was headed for a fall, and it was going to be a headfirst dive off the end of the world, and everybody knew. And once you worked it out you couldn’t stop watching him.
People stayed because they fell in love with Jack, Cornelius, whatever his name was. But by the time Doyle worked that out, he couldn’t look away.
* the other 11, for the record: Stuart Jones, Queer As Folk UK. Remus Lupin, Harry Potter. Fry, Futurama. Dougal MacGuire, Father Ted. Destruction, Sandman. Dominic Monaghan, err… real person. Devon MacLeish, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jack Sparrow, PoTC. Julian Sark, Alias. Brian Steadman, Teachers. Crowley, Good Omens.
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on 2005-01-13 09:03 pm (UTC)