dizzy_land | It's just the power to charm

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It's just the power to charm

((Closed to Cayce, Azi, Crowley, and Ellie. Backdated to a day or two after the Bentley Babes caper.))

Cayce wasn't jealous. That much was easy enough to define; she cared for Crowley a lot, but not That Way. And notwithstanding her admission at the community Truth or Dare game, she definitely wasn't queer for Ellie either, although she certainly liked her well enough. Actually, she thought the two of them pairing up was kind of cute.

But for reasons she was still hard pressed to identify, she was a little perturbed when the two of them up and vanished from the lake party, and clearly Aziraphale was too. They'd exchanged a few half-heartedly snarky (and subtly worried) comments at the time before finally sort of shrugging it off, and Cayce had said something about coming by the tea shop later.

So now she was suiting action to the word. She sort of hoped that Crowley wouldn't be around. It'd spare everyone a touch of awkwardness.

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Ellie smiled wryly as she dug around the miscellaneous storage boxes that served her as furniture apart from the bed, and came up with a box of gourmet truffles from some shop or other. She opened it, grabbed one and came back to plunk down on the bed again.

"What you are," she said, holding the box out to Cayce, "is a friend, and that's a pretty rare commodity where I come from. Just stick around and keep not freaking out, okay? It helps a lot." She didn't claim to speak for Crowley, but she suspected he'd say pretty much the same thing.

"Not freaking out I can do." Cayce picked a truffle at random. "Every now and then it hits me, just how much utterly bizarre and random stuff I've gotten used to around here. By all rights I should have gone totally off my head by now."

Changing the subject was good. It gave Ellie some breathing space before she had to decide what to do next. (The option that was currently winning out in her head was to go collect a pretty blonde scalp and present it to Crowley as a souvenir, but that was why she really needed some time to think.)

"It never ceases to amaze me how well you guys manage to adapt to your circumstances in so short a time," she mused. She meant humans, of course. "You should see the shit that goes on where I come from, though. Alien invaders, pan-dimensional crises, guys in tights tearing up whole cities. And that's just on Earth, never mind the rest of reality." She shook her head. "I live there and I don't even believe half of it."

"It's not quite that exciting where I come from," Cayce said wryly. "Ordinary people get up to enough horrible crap on their own, as it turns out. Still, you're right ... we can get used to almost anything. A few years ago in my ... my timeline, they were saying irony was dead, and there was even this thing in the Onion—it's a satirical newspaper—about how 'Americans desperately want to care about stupid shit again.' And then a couple years later we were right back to the stupid shit."

Ellie grimaced slightly, her eyes on the neat rows of candy in the box. "That's hardly unique to Americans. Or humans." She carefully picked out another chocolate. "It's mainly the distractions that make life bearable."

A cautious knock on the door interrupted their conversation...

Ellie shot Cayce a look full of dread, crammed the truffle into her mouth and swallowed it nearly whole, and got up to go look out the window.

"Um. Hi," she said uncertainly when she saw Crowley standing below.

"Hi," he called back, witty as ever. "...Can I come up?"

"Sure," she said, not sure to be encouraged or worried at the conspicuous absence of towering fury. "Cayce's here..."

Crowley wasn't sure what to make of all this yet himself, but he wasn't angry with the two women who'd been used just the same as he.

"Good. I need to talk to both of you."

Making his way inside, Crowley hobbled as gracefully as possible up the ladder, relying mostly on his arms and good leg. Once he'd climbed into the room, he noticed Cayce sitting on the spot where he and Ellie had... well, it was incredibly awkward and he did not like feeling awkward.

"Hi, Cayce," he nodded. "Ellie."

As was becoming her habit, Ellie quietly let out the breath she'd been holding when he made it up without breaking his neck, and smiled wanly in response.

Cayce's own smile was a bit thin, although she was definitely glad that Crowley didn't seem to have flown off the handle over the whole debacle. She had to assume that the conversation with Aziraphale had gone well.

"Hey Crowley," she said. "So I, uh, I guess you've been filled in, huh?"

"Yeah," he muttered. "Apparently we were all fucked over by the Greek slattern." Crowley glanced between the two women before training his sunglasses on his snakeskin shoes. "And although it turned out all right in the end, we might not have been so lucky."

He looked up. "So I have every intention of teaching her not to screw with us again. Interested?"

...turned out all right in the end... Ellie felt momentarily lightheaded with relief at what that statement implied. "Count me in," she said at once, "what'd you have in mind?"

"Me too," Cayce said. "For whatever that's worth."

"Means a lot to me," Crowley replied quietly. But it was only a brief instance of sentimentality. He was all business the next moment.

"You both know the story of Aphrodite and the golden apple, yes?"

Cayce frowned. "I ... yeah, I remember. That was the beauty contest, right? The apple inscribed 'For the fairest'. And whatsisname awarded it to Aphrodite and that all led to the Trojan War, right?"

"Yeah. She totally cheated, the wench." Ellie rolled her eyes. "If I hadn't met her I'd think it was an apocryphal story, but she really is that egotistical."

"What if she can't cheat this time?" asked Crowley shortly, expecting they'd both pick up on the implications in the question.

Cayce raised an eyebrow. "If ... someone else beats her to it, say?"

"Oh, let's just say that it's possible that Paris could induced into preferring her daughter-in-law this round..."

Cayce snickered. "Ah-ha. I think I get your meaning." A thought occurred to her. "You don't think that'd cause, um, more trouble than's already been, do you?"

Crowley didn't really care if it did, to be honest, but Cayce obviously did, so he shrugged. "She can't do anything that I can't prevent when I'm aware of what's going on. If Ellie and Aziraphale tag along as well, I shouldn't think there'd be anything to worry about." He glanced at the succubus to get her thoughts on the matter.

"Oh, that's good. That's very good." Ellie laughed low in her throat. "You're evil. And I mean that in the best possible way. Where, when and who else?"

He laughed. It was nice to be validated once in a while.

"I was thinking in a fortnight on the Snow White stage. If I've got you, Ellie, Antoinette, Aphrodite, and Psyche - maybe Angela, too - it'd be enough, but more could participate if they wanted to."

Crowley turned to speak frankly to Cayce. "I won't say that you can't be part of this, because you sure as hell deserve your piece as much as we do, but I'd be a fuckload happier keeping you out of this one. Or at least out of direct view. I'm sure we could use someone to keep an eye on things behind the scenes..." He didn't want Cayce to think that he thought that she wasn't pretty enough or strong enough to participate, but as the only mortal in the group, she'd be a lot more vulnerable than the others and Crowley's interest lay in keeping her safe.

"As for the rest, I was thinking that Kira would enjoy playing host and we can have a small panel of judges just to look legitimate."

Then the demon gave an evil grin. "You know, I've always wondered what an Ancient Greek would wear in a swimsuit competition..."

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