Chapter Text
England, April of 1958.
Discrimination comes in all forms and varieties. Anthony J. Crowley, a white gentleman, was only oppressed through his own fault. His father had informed him of this time and time again; how many times, boy? If you would quit all of the nonsense then people wouldn’t treat you as if you were less than the dirt on the bottom of their shoe. He was male, he was white, he was young. He came from a relatively well-off family. The most common form of discrimination was the discrimination of race and sex, and Crowley didn’t apply for that.
Tucking his freezing hands to his chest, Crowley quickened his pace to generate some more body heat. He was always half-frozen these days, as if the marrow of his bones had been replaced with icy water whilst he slept. He didn’t apply for any of that and yet people spat at him and called him names and taunted him day in, day out. He’d learned to ignore it for the most part but, on days like today where he felt as if he would never regain any warmth and wondered if he would ever get out of this, it was really fucking hard.
Crowley shouldered his way into the cafe at the end of the street. Immediately, he was hit with the smell of coffee beans and fire and newspaper ink. He paused in the doorway for a brief second, breathing out a sigh of relief as his arctic appendages began to thaw, before pulling down the red scarf that he had bundled high around his face and walking up to the till. “What can I get for you today?” The woman behind the cash register asked, briefly looking him up and down with a raised brow. She shook herself out of it and plastered on a thin, fake smile.
“Uh,” Crowley moved from side to side as the blood in his legs heated up again, “jus’ a black coffee please. To go.” With the most whipped cream and sprinkles you’re allowed to put on one drink and the warmest, sweetest edible thing you have.
The woman called over her shoulder for a black coffee to go and punched at the keys on the cash register. “Okay, that will be twenty-five pence please.” She held out her hand. Crowley shoved his hands down his pocket and withdrew a handful of pennies. How many was that? Five, ten, two… “Ah,” Crowley shoved his hand in the other pocket of his jacket and passed the woman twenty-five pence exactly. She smiled at him warily and nodded her head to the right. “It will be with you in just two ticks.” He nodded and walked over to wait. Twenty-five pence poorer, Crowley leaned against the wall and crossed one leg over the other.
Had he needed the coffee? Uh, no. He’d needed a drink, but a coffee was a bit of a luxury when he could’ve bought a water for… He didn’t know how much. Less than three quarters of what he had just paid, that was for sure. But water was cold and he was sick of the looks he received for ordering just one glass of water to go and he was so, so tired. Coffee would fix all of that, wouldn’t it? Most of it. “Here you go, sir.” A woman standing in front of him slid a Styrofoam cup towards him. “One black coffee to go.”
Nodding again (was that the only thing he was capable of doing?), Crowley uncrossed his legs and walked over to grab the coffee. “Cheers,” he wrapped his hands around it and began to walk out of the cafe. He took a sip of the coffee, despite of the steam that radiated through the lid and the burning heat that sank into his hands from where he held it and how it all but scorched his mouth as if he had just drank liquid fire, it was one of the best coffees he had ever tasted in his life.
Not that he’d tasted a lot, being homeless and all.
There were two ways to occupy oneself when one was homeless: cover your entire being in whatever you could find, fall asleep, and hope some lovely human being would place whatever money they had in the cup you had placed ten centimeters before you. This option was Crowley’s least favored option on the grounds that it relied on basic human decency and, well, basic human decency wasn’t given to people like him. If he went through the day without being bothered by anyone (and by ‘bothered’ Crowley did mean being assaulted both physically and verbally, being stolen from, being chucked out of anywhere he set foot in, being spat on, or having people make fun of him), then Crowley considered it a good day.
Well, not a good day per se. None of the days were good days so far. But it was a day. Not a good one, not a bad one. He would take whatever days he could.
The second option was to wander around all day. Crowley knew London like he knew the back of his hand, having been homeless for eleven months now and spending the entirety of that eleven months wandering from place to place, street to street, like a ghost chained to its place of death. Wandering around didn’t bring much money and it also came with the risk of having whatever belongings he had being stolen whilst he was away, which Crowley thought might actually be a blessing in disguise. If he did so happen to lose everything except the clothes in his back, then he had nothing. Absolutely nothing. It would mean rock bottom. But at least it wouldn’t be able to get any worse.
Despite having finished his coffee, Crowley carried around the cup as if it was still full to the brim. He wanted to leech as much warmth from it as possible and, well, it might come in handy for something or other. He had learned how to make do with what he had; he had learned that stuffing your shoes with napkins would keep your feet relatively warm when you only owned one pair of socks, always put your coat on when you’re hot because a coat preserves heat and it can’t actually create heat, people were more likely to give you money when they knew that other people had given you money, and people were more likely to be kinder to you if they thought you were a woman.
Crowley knew the last one from personal experience. He’d been covered by fabric and his hair had grown long from not being able to afford a hair cut and a group of men must’ve mistaken Crowley for a woman. And so they had given him a ten shilling note and some water and one had even offered to let him sleep the night in his bed - Crowley still wasn’t sure whether or not that was a sexual invitation - and, when he opened his mouth to thank the men, they realized that Crowley was, in fact, of the male sex. After taking back everything they had given and offered, two of them beat Crowley up and had threatened to do much worse if he ever ‘impersonated a sweet young thing’ again. He still had the scars.
His hair was fairly long now. Just above his shoulders. He had learned how to cut it himself with a knife he had bought last month - a pretty wise investment if he did say so himself, even if it meant he went without food or drink for two days. The knife meant he could cut his hair, cut up anything that people might leave on the street into something practical for himself, and had even been used as a weapon on one particular occasion. He hadn’t used it - had only brandished it with a glare that Crowley had hoped conveyed his utter dislike for people in general.
That last part wasn’t true. Crowley liked people just fine so long as they treated him like a person. The barest minimum of respect and it was still hard to come by. But he could perhaps pretend to be a woman for a few days. He didn’t have to speak to anyone if he didn’t want to. It would perhaps bring in enough money for him to be able to afford a drink and a packet of some sort of food tomorrow, considering he had spent what he had planned to spend on food tomorrow today at the cafe. He, Anthony J Crowley, had traded food for a small cup of black coffee.
People always frown upon the homeless for spending - ‘wasting’ - their money on unnecessary items. Had Crowley needed the coffee? Of course not. The knife? Don’t be ridiculous. He hadn’t needed another pair of gloves to wear over the pair he already had, he hadn’t needed the map of London he had bought during his third month of being homeless (because, damn it, if was going to spend the rest of his life walking around the city then he at least wanted to know where he was going), and he certainly hadn’t needed the pack of biscuits he had bought during month five even if he had been his twenty-second birthday.
But people who weren’t homeless didn’t need half of the stuff they had, either. They didn’t need cars or phones or a wardrobe full of clothes and shoes. They didn’t need hundreds of pillows and blankets, they didn’t need chocolate or wines. Or paintings or furniture. Nobody complained, nobody moaned, when people who weren’t homeless bought things they didn’t need. Excess isn’t frowned upon when you can afford it. But people think they have a right to judge homeless people when they splurge on something nice (and how was it splurging anyway? It wasn’t like they were wasting their housing budget on crap they didn’t need) because… They don’t believe that a homeless person owns the money they have.
If you give money to a homeless person, do you think of that person being ten pence richer? Or do you think that you’ve done a good deed?
With a sigh, Crowley collapsed into a bench that resembled a frozen, soggy lump of wood more than it did a bench. Across from him, a silver river cut through the ground. Two ducks were waddling around the bank, staring and pecking at the dirt as if they were hoping to uncover some food. If Crowley could, he would buy the biggest and warmest loaf of bread he could find and feed it to them, even if bread was bad for ducks. Wine was bad for humans and they still drank it in abundance - some things were just enjoyable. They made life enjoyable and if Crowley could enhance a small duck’s small life by treating them to something that was bad for them, then he would.
Alas, he was too poor to even feed the ducks. He would have laughed had his face not felt like it was so cold it would crack with any movement (humanly impossible, obviously, but Crowley wasn’t about to take any risks). Too poor to feed the ducks. Too poor to eat today, too. He toyed with the Styrofoam cup in between his hands. Too poor to throw the cup away on the off chance that it would ever be useful. When did it end?
He would never be hired anywhere, would he? He had no qualifications, no address, no car. And how could he show up to a job interview wearing jeans and smelling like rainwater? Anywhere that might hire him would laugh at his application and kick him out of the interview before he had both of his feet over the threshold.
Need money to be considered for a job, need a job to have money.
There was no point in wallowing. Wallowing and thinking were just overall… bad ideas. Crowley didn’t advise it to anyone. If you start to wallow in self-pity or over think things, then you get stuck in a loop. It becomes a habit. Eventually, it becomes an obsession and then it leads to depression. So no, no Crowley didn’t encourage the idea of them.
The world became doused in gray. Crowley looked up and watched as the clouds grew darker and thicker. “Oh, come on!” He groaned, unsure of who he was talking to. Rain or rainstorms (bad weather in general, really) meant that all of his belongings would be soaked through by the time he reached them. It also meant that he would be sleeping on a bed of damp ice tonight, if he was able to sleep at all… There was always the option of dragging all his stuff undercover - car parks, train stations, bus stops, the overhung signs of shops - but those places were always full of other homeless people and Crowley really didn’t fancy being in a group of homeless people. Safety was not always in numbers. And, besides, people always thought they were practicing deviant behavior and would call the police on the group. The police didn’t handle things very well sometimes. He still had bruises.
Resigning himself to a cold and damp bed and the fate of quite possibly waking up with blue lips, Crowley watched as the sky split like cracked marble and the rain began to pour.
“Watch yourself, boy.”
Crowley looked up from where he was hunched over in the doorway of some sleazy pub on the outskirts of Central London. He couldn’t bring himself to drag his numb body all the way back to where he had left all of his stuff, couldn’t bring himself to face the idea that it all might have been stolen by now. If he never went back, he would never find out and he could stay an optimist for the rest of his days. He’d seen a closed pub and decided that waiting in the doorway until the rain let up might be a good idea.
A portly man wearing a brown suit stood in front of him with a raised brow, suggesting that Crowley’s supposed good idea might not actually be that good at all. “You work here?”
Crowley sniffed and wrapped his arms around himself. God, he was drenched. Nowhere to stay until he dried off. “N-No,” he said, hating how his teeth chattered. “I think they’re c-closed.”
“Oh,” the man lowered a thick wad of papers. “I’ll come back then. Unless…” He looked at Crowley and began drumming his fingers against the papers. “Do you come here often, boy?”
“Sure,” Crowley said. He had learned how to be a pretty good liar in the eleven months he had been out here. The worst thing that was going to happen was that he would go to jail and, if he did, then he had a roof over his head and food was provided day in and day out. There were worse fates for him. “What’re they?” He nodded his head to the papers the man clutched close to his chest.
The man hummed. “Well, they’re posters. Adverts. I’m a piano teacher, see, and was told that there’s a cork board in that bar that is all but covered in posters like mine. I’ve been looking for a place that would advertise them like this so I can get more customers. Money’s been a bit tight recently, you understand.”
Crowley snorted. “’Course I do.”
“Well, since you’re something of a regular here,” the man gestured with his armful of papers, “I was wondering if you could perhaps do me a favor? If you could hand in these posters to the manager or someone when they open again, that would be spiffng, boy. I think they would be more inclined to place them somewhere visible if they came from a regular customer, don’t you?”
“Uh, um…” Crowley spluttered before shaking his head slightly. “Yeah, sure. No problem. I’ll do it for you.”
The man smiled, the first time anyone had really smiled in front of Crowley for a long time, and handed Crowley the papers. “You’re a saint, boy. Thank you ever so much.” Crowley held out his hands for the papers and nearly dropped them at the numbness in his hands. He clenched his hands and held them firmly against his chest as best he could. The man drew out his wallet and began flicking through his notes. “What do I owe you? Half a crown seems fair, doesn’t it?”
“That’s, uh, that’s really not necessary.” Crowley stared at the man’s outstretched hand, debating taking the coin or not. If he had the money, he could afford food for the next… four days. More if he was sensible.
“Nonsense!” The man cried and thrust the coin closer to Crowley. “You’re doing me a massive favor, I owe you at least something.”
Crowley nodded and shifted the papers into one arm so he could accept the man’s money. “O-Okay. Thank you.”
Nodding, the man handed over the half a crown and began walking away. “Have a good day, boy,” he called over his shoulder.
Posters bundled in a shivering arm and a halfcrown already in his pocket, Crowley watched the man as he left and thought that… Maybe it was a good day after all.