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fic post: Christmas Number One
TITLE: Christmas Number One
FANDOM: Hot Fuzz
AUTHOR: annlarimer
WORD COUNT: 1500. Ish.
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: "Nicholas! Nicholas! It shows how to do flesh rotting off a skull. And oh my God, werewolf Nazis!"
WARNINGS: Jesus Christ, it's a Christmas story! GET IN THE CAR!
DISCLAIMER: Obviously not mine.
NOTES: There's no American cultural equivalent of the Christmas Number One. It's a bit like being the winner of the annual Fourth of July weekend box-office competition (hint for wagerers: it's probably got Will Smith in it), but it's not really the same thing. Mr Wikipedia gives a good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_number_one_single . The statistically inclined can find a list of Christmas Number Ones here: http://www.everyhit.co.uk/christmasnumber1.html
I also forgot to credit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crantz for the original prompt, because I have a memory like a steel seive.
ARCHIVE: Please ask first.
"Nicholas."
He was dreaming about the church roof, preparing to fly off it. "Nr."
"Nicholas."
White feathers dropped from the sky, gleaming in the sunshine. "G'way."
Danny nudged him. "Wake up."
He adjusted his helmet and goggles, and -- Dammit. "No."
"It's Christmas."
"You what? Oh. It's..." He got a glimpse of the digital clock. "It's 4:30, you maniac!"
"It's Christmas!"
"And you're making breakfast for Baby Jesus? He's not up yet."
"C'mon!" Danny turned the lights on.
"Gaah!" Nicholas threw an arm over his eyes. He was an early riser, but dear Jesus. "You fucker. Fine. All right."
"We got to have Christmas before we go to work." The bed creaked and bobbed as Danny got up.
The rest of the squad had family in Sandford, so it only seemed fair that Nicholas and Danny take Christmas day shift. They could annoy one another at the station as easily as at home, and the quiet would make it easier for Nicholas to hack away at his end-of-year reports. This year's, thank God, weren't too difficult. "N/A - records destroyed in explosion" saved a lot of work. Though the report explaining the destruction of the previous reports kind of made up for it.
He was also fairly certain that Danny didn't want to think too hard about Christmas without his dad.
Danny was already in the living room. "Nicholas."
"I'm coming." He flailed until the covers came off, then sort of rolled out of the bed. Stupid fucking early fucking Chris--"Jesus shit!" Nicholas stubbed a toe on the metal bed frame. "Shit shit shit shit--"
He stopped in the doorway. The tree was lit, the television was silently playing Die Hard to itself -- Danny's idea of seasonal ambiance -- and Danny was standing in front of the tree, looking at him expectantly.
"Look what Santa brought you," said Danny.
There, under the tree, the cuddly monkey -- wearing Danny's old constable's helmet -- had an arm raised in greeting. And he was sitting in...sitting in...
Nicholas gaped. Father Christmas, he decided, wasn't so bad when he wasn't packing a flick knife.
"You must've been a very good boy this year," Danny said.
Nicholas gaped more. He looked at Danny. Then he looked back at the tree. "By the power of Greyskull!" It just slipped out. As it generally did.
"Heeeyeah," Danny agreed, grinning. "I'm opening mine now."
"Yeah." Nicholas still gaped. "Oh. It's in the oven." The one place Danny would never look. Nicholas had had to shift a dictionary, an old telephone directory, and an unopened package of Tesco's tube socks to make room.
"I know."
Dammit.
***
Zwhr! Danny peered closely at the pencil sharpener's inner workings. It had a clear plastic shell, so he could see the blade eat away at the pencil, and the cuppy bit fill with shavings. Well, they were more grainy than curly, not so much shavings as mulchings. Brilliant. Zwhr!
He fed it an entire Sandford Building Society pencil, chuckling fiendishly. Zwhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
The thing made the sort of points one associated with Concorde, or headhunters' blowdarts. The lines he'd drawn with them were sharp and true and fine, when he didn't snap off the pencil point.
He'd get the hang of it. Nicholas wouldn't have given him the things if he couldn't get the hang of it.
There was a wooden box filled with pencils (both wood and propelling), and pens (wicked satin blacks, glorious blood reds, intimidating but intriguing Japanese brush tips, and promising golds and silvers), and frankly alien erasers that went squish when you squished them. The box had once held cheese, it said on the side, and someone's crayons, if the marks inside were anything to go by, and was pleasingly stained and battered. It was a steadfast sort of box, the kind of box that inspired confidence.
There was enough paper to feed a large, paper-eating animal for days. Vast, creamy drawing pads -- the sort of thing he'd often looked at longingly in the stationer's but could never quite bring himself to buy, because they were far too nice. Invisible blue grids (isometric and the, er, griddy kind), a sketchbook with hard covers, and a clutch of tiny black things that begged to be made into flipbooks. (Despite the name, Nicholas assured him they were not in fact made from moles. Danny liked moles, and saw no reason for them to give their lives so that he might produce John McClane Rides Shotgun for Santa.) And there were books: Basic Animation Techniques, Action Cartooning, and How to Draw Monster Chiller Gross-Out Horror. Yippee-ki-yay!
"Nicholas! Nicholas! It shows how to do flesh rotting off a skull. And oh my God, werewolf Nazis!"
"Yeah." Nicholas was sitting cross-legged on the floor, head in his hands, still staring at the police pedal car.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
Danny scooted in next to him. "Surprised?"
Nicholas nodded mutely.
Cuddly monkey looked smug.
Nicholas still stared.
The car had an old-fashioned number plate that said NICHOLAS.
Nicholas gave Danny one of those big-eyed, confused looks that he got whenever something amazing happened. It was a lot like the look he got when somebody stabbed him -- emotional extremes tended to throw him off balance. Danny found it thoroughly adorable, so long as nobody was spurting blood.
"Danny, I --" he threw his arms around Danny and hugged him. "Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Ta. Thanks." Now, Nicholas Angel was to ordinary displays of emotion what a creosote-dipped badger is to figure skating. But he still managed to give Danny a thorough and affectionate squishing.
"I took the Polaroid of you and the old car off your fridge door." Nicholas, apparently, wasn't going to let go any time soon, so Danny wrapped his own arms round him -- much less effort than for Nicholas to do the same. "You really should get that framed properly."
"Yeah."
"And I scanned it and I went on the Internet. Turns out there's people who're, like, their whole thing is old pedal cars, it's amazing. They're like train people. Or Dinkytoy people. So it took maybe a day, right, to find out what it was. But then I thought, the same one, even an old clapped out rusty one--"
"It's beautiful."
"It just didn't seem right somehow to get the same one."
"No. Yeah."
"So I had a look round, and they still make the things! Who knew?"
"Yeah."
"They had a police truck, but it looked shifty. I didn't trust it."
"No."
"And another car with 'Protect and Serve' on the bonnet. But it had a sadface grill on the front that was all depressing. And I really liked the checkerboard bits and the badge there on the side on this one."
"Yeah."
"'Cause they go with yer hat. And the new cars we got. And I figured you could put yer peace lily in it."
"Yeah."
"Is it all right? Is it okay?"
Nicholas nodded enthusiastically against his chest. "Yeah."
"It's just you're kind of crushing me."
"Yeah -- oh, sorry."
Then Nicholas did something sneaky with a shift of weight, and they were both lying full-length on the floor, and, well... all in all, Danny thought a bit later, Nicholas must have really, really liked his present.
After that, there was really nothing to be done except make breakfast.
And put the tree and the pedal car upright again.
And rescue the monkey from under the pedal car.
And find out where Danny's helmet had rolled off to.
***
Danny was thoroughly pleased with himself, in that firing two guns whilst jumping through the air going ahhhhhh in a high-speed pursuit sort of way. He'd finally got it right. Things break, or they get lost, and most of the time, there's little hope of mending them or finding them. Most of the time -- he'd learned this years ago, the hard way -- it's a very bad idea to even try.
But sometimes, just sometimes...
"I fuckin' rock," Danny told the pan of milk he was heating, and it didn't argue.
"Sorry, what?" Nicholas was cracking eggs.
"We probably shouldn't do stuff like that in front of the cuddly monkey. It'll grow up all weird."
Nicholas looked at him sideways, through narrow eyes. "Maybe the monkey likes to watch."
"That's just fuckin' creepy!"
"Watching...always watching..."
"Stop it."
"With its googly eyes. Taking in everything."
"Annnnnnd you've ruined Christmas."
After breakfast, they went back to sleep, because it was still far too early.
Thanks to:
crantz, for the line about the monkey. Watching. Always watching.
Nicholas' present is the Murray Comet Pedal Car.
FANDOM: Hot Fuzz
AUTHOR: annlarimer
WORD COUNT: 1500. Ish.
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: "Nicholas! Nicholas! It shows how to do flesh rotting off a skull. And oh my God, werewolf Nazis!"
WARNINGS: Jesus Christ, it's a Christmas story! GET IN THE CAR!
DISCLAIMER: Obviously not mine.
NOTES: There's no American cultural equivalent of the Christmas Number One. It's a bit like being the winner of the annual Fourth of July weekend box-office competition (hint for wagerers: it's probably got Will Smith in it), but it's not really the same thing. Mr Wikipedia gives a good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_number_one_single . The statistically inclined can find a list of Christmas Number Ones here: http://www.everyhit.co.uk/christmasnumber1.html
I also forgot to credit
crantz for the original prompt, because I have a memory like a steel seive. ARCHIVE: Please ask first.
"Nicholas."
He was dreaming about the church roof, preparing to fly off it. "Nr."
"Nicholas."
White feathers dropped from the sky, gleaming in the sunshine. "G'way."
Danny nudged him. "Wake up."
He adjusted his helmet and goggles, and -- Dammit. "No."
"It's Christmas."
"You what? Oh. It's..." He got a glimpse of the digital clock. "It's 4:30, you maniac!"
"It's Christmas!"
"And you're making breakfast for Baby Jesus? He's not up yet."
"C'mon!" Danny turned the lights on.
"Gaah!" Nicholas threw an arm over his eyes. He was an early riser, but dear Jesus. "You fucker. Fine. All right."
"We got to have Christmas before we go to work." The bed creaked and bobbed as Danny got up.
The rest of the squad had family in Sandford, so it only seemed fair that Nicholas and Danny take Christmas day shift. They could annoy one another at the station as easily as at home, and the quiet would make it easier for Nicholas to hack away at his end-of-year reports. This year's, thank God, weren't too difficult. "N/A - records destroyed in explosion" saved a lot of work. Though the report explaining the destruction of the previous reports kind of made up for it.
He was also fairly certain that Danny didn't want to think too hard about Christmas without his dad.
Danny was already in the living room. "Nicholas."
"I'm coming." He flailed until the covers came off, then sort of rolled out of the bed. Stupid fucking early fucking Chris--"Jesus shit!" Nicholas stubbed a toe on the metal bed frame. "Shit shit shit shit--"
He stopped in the doorway. The tree was lit, the television was silently playing Die Hard to itself -- Danny's idea of seasonal ambiance -- and Danny was standing in front of the tree, looking at him expectantly.
"Look what Santa brought you," said Danny.
There, under the tree, the cuddly monkey -- wearing Danny's old constable's helmet -- had an arm raised in greeting. And he was sitting in...sitting in...
Nicholas gaped. Father Christmas, he decided, wasn't so bad when he wasn't packing a flick knife.
"You must've been a very good boy this year," Danny said.
Nicholas gaped more. He looked at Danny. Then he looked back at the tree. "By the power of Greyskull!" It just slipped out. As it generally did.
"Heeeyeah," Danny agreed, grinning. "I'm opening mine now."
"Yeah." Nicholas still gaped. "Oh. It's in the oven." The one place Danny would never look. Nicholas had had to shift a dictionary, an old telephone directory, and an unopened package of Tesco's tube socks to make room.
"I know."
Dammit.
***
Zwhr! Danny peered closely at the pencil sharpener's inner workings. It had a clear plastic shell, so he could see the blade eat away at the pencil, and the cuppy bit fill with shavings. Well, they were more grainy than curly, not so much shavings as mulchings. Brilliant. Zwhr!
He fed it an entire Sandford Building Society pencil, chuckling fiendishly. Zwhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
The thing made the sort of points one associated with Concorde, or headhunters' blowdarts. The lines he'd drawn with them were sharp and true and fine, when he didn't snap off the pencil point.
He'd get the hang of it. Nicholas wouldn't have given him the things if he couldn't get the hang of it.
There was a wooden box filled with pencils (both wood and propelling), and pens (wicked satin blacks, glorious blood reds, intimidating but intriguing Japanese brush tips, and promising golds and silvers), and frankly alien erasers that went squish when you squished them. The box had once held cheese, it said on the side, and someone's crayons, if the marks inside were anything to go by, and was pleasingly stained and battered. It was a steadfast sort of box, the kind of box that inspired confidence.
There was enough paper to feed a large, paper-eating animal for days. Vast, creamy drawing pads -- the sort of thing he'd often looked at longingly in the stationer's but could never quite bring himself to buy, because they were far too nice. Invisible blue grids (isometric and the, er, griddy kind), a sketchbook with hard covers, and a clutch of tiny black things that begged to be made into flipbooks. (Despite the name, Nicholas assured him they were not in fact made from moles. Danny liked moles, and saw no reason for them to give their lives so that he might produce John McClane Rides Shotgun for Santa.) And there were books: Basic Animation Techniques, Action Cartooning, and How to Draw Monster Chiller Gross-Out Horror. Yippee-ki-yay!
"Nicholas! Nicholas! It shows how to do flesh rotting off a skull. And oh my God, werewolf Nazis!"
"Yeah." Nicholas was sitting cross-legged on the floor, head in his hands, still staring at the police pedal car.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
Danny scooted in next to him. "Surprised?"
Nicholas nodded mutely.
Cuddly monkey looked smug.
Nicholas still stared.
The car had an old-fashioned number plate that said NICHOLAS.
Nicholas gave Danny one of those big-eyed, confused looks that he got whenever something amazing happened. It was a lot like the look he got when somebody stabbed him -- emotional extremes tended to throw him off balance. Danny found it thoroughly adorable, so long as nobody was spurting blood.
"Danny, I --" he threw his arms around Danny and hugged him. "Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Ta. Thanks." Now, Nicholas Angel was to ordinary displays of emotion what a creosote-dipped badger is to figure skating. But he still managed to give Danny a thorough and affectionate squishing.
"I took the Polaroid of you and the old car off your fridge door." Nicholas, apparently, wasn't going to let go any time soon, so Danny wrapped his own arms round him -- much less effort than for Nicholas to do the same. "You really should get that framed properly."
"Yeah."
"And I scanned it and I went on the Internet. Turns out there's people who're, like, their whole thing is old pedal cars, it's amazing. They're like train people. Or Dinkytoy people. So it took maybe a day, right, to find out what it was. But then I thought, the same one, even an old clapped out rusty one--"
"It's beautiful."
"It just didn't seem right somehow to get the same one."
"No. Yeah."
"So I had a look round, and they still make the things! Who knew?"
"Yeah."
"They had a police truck, but it looked shifty. I didn't trust it."
"No."
"And another car with 'Protect and Serve' on the bonnet. But it had a sadface grill on the front that was all depressing. And I really liked the checkerboard bits and the badge there on the side on this one."
"Yeah."
"'Cause they go with yer hat. And the new cars we got. And I figured you could put yer peace lily in it."
"Yeah."
"Is it all right? Is it okay?"
Nicholas nodded enthusiastically against his chest. "Yeah."
"It's just you're kind of crushing me."
"Yeah -- oh, sorry."
Then Nicholas did something sneaky with a shift of weight, and they were both lying full-length on the floor, and, well... all in all, Danny thought a bit later, Nicholas must have really, really liked his present.
After that, there was really nothing to be done except make breakfast.
And put the tree and the pedal car upright again.
And rescue the monkey from under the pedal car.
And find out where Danny's helmet had rolled off to.
***
Danny was thoroughly pleased with himself, in that firing two guns whilst jumping through the air going ahhhhhh in a high-speed pursuit sort of way. He'd finally got it right. Things break, or they get lost, and most of the time, there's little hope of mending them or finding them. Most of the time -- he'd learned this years ago, the hard way -- it's a very bad idea to even try.
But sometimes, just sometimes...
"I fuckin' rock," Danny told the pan of milk he was heating, and it didn't argue.
"Sorry, what?" Nicholas was cracking eggs.
"We probably shouldn't do stuff like that in front of the cuddly monkey. It'll grow up all weird."
Nicholas looked at him sideways, through narrow eyes. "Maybe the monkey likes to watch."
"That's just fuckin' creepy!"
"Watching...always watching..."
"Stop it."
"With its googly eyes. Taking in everything."
"Annnnnnd you've ruined Christmas."
After breakfast, they went back to sleep, because it was still far too early.
Thanks to:
crantz, for the line about the monkey. Watching. Always watching.Nicholas' present is the Murray Comet Pedal Car.
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