shipping | psl

"Wait, why are you setting it on fire...?" Crowley asks, panicked as Aziraphale gets too close to - whatever the fire box thing is.

He suspects it's something that has to be done to make things like bread and whatever cake is, but he's not sure why, and something in his stomach twists at the thought of fire being too close to Aziraphale.

So he hovers, prepared to pull his human lover out of the jaws of fire-y death at a moment's notice, all while glaring daggers at the oven.

If it sent so much as a spark out of line, so help him...

Aziraphale tosses the piece of paper into the sink and quickly puts it out, as well as sticking his fingers into cold water since he's gotten a bit of red. It's not really a burn, it'll go away. "Oh, it's a bit of magic, really. You'll see in a half hour. Do you remember how the cake went in and it was a liquid, a bit like the texture of the cream? Just keep that in mind."

But surely he'd be enchanted by the smell of freshly-baking cake. In the meantime, he takes out a whisk and some butter and sugar, and squeezes some lemon to make a lovely icing for the cake, which he thinks he might just pour on while hot so he can serve Crowley right away. He prefers a fluffy frosting, but that would require waiting for the cake to get cold first, and he's so impatient when it comes to Crowley. His whole life has been at one pace and it feels like suddenly he's catching up.

"Darling, what's wrong?" he asks, as he looks over and catches Crowley glowering at the oven.

"Making sure it doesn't pull anything funny," he says, not taking his eyes off the oven. "I know how quick fire can get out of control."

He spots the redness on Aziraphale's finger, and puffs himself up again.

"Just like that! You see? It can be very sneaky, fire. ...Right, give us a look, love, I can make it feel better."

Crowley holds out his hand for Aziraphale to show him the damaged digit.

"Crowley, I knew it was going to do that. I was just too lazy to get out my tongs." He gives Crowley his hand anyway, for him to inspect. "It's only a little red, not even properly burnt. It'll be alright."

But he does sort of like the attention, and with his other hand, tries to ease Crowley by rubbing his back. "My love, it's an oven. All human houses have one, and it's meant for making food for us. You know we have to cook everything."

He hopes that explains it, but if not, Crowley will see in about half an hour.

"See, my dear? It's perfectly fine. No harm done."

Crowley makes a skeptical noise at the back of his throat, but nods. Aziraphale seems to know what he's doing at the very least.

Taking his hand, Crowley presses a kiss to the barely-singed pad of his finger, the peculiar coolness of his skin probably some bit of relief. But it spreads, and quite suddenly the redness has gone completely.

"No harm at all. See? Useful, eh?"

"Oh!" he exclaims excitedly, looking at his finger as if to discern some sort of trick. "Wow, that's incredible. Did you do that? How?" he asks, eyes widened. "Is it magic?"

He hopes there wasn't any sort of hidden cost in that, like energy or something. Would just be awful to take any of Crowley's health when he should be using it to heal himself. Which, speaking of, "what about your injuries, dear?"

He'll go back to fussing in a minute if Crowley isn't careful. "Should we redress your wounds?"

Crowley doesn't mind the fussing, of course, and is torn between being very impressive and saying they don't hurt a bit or milking the human's sympathy, perhaps enough to entice him back to that soft bed where they could cuddle up and talk the afternoon away.

He decides, however, to be honest.

"Just a little sore, really. They weren't that deep and I heal pretty quick. Little bit of a trick I picked up in my more priestly days."

He surveys Aziraphale with a fond smile.

"...And I had an excellent healer looking after me. That might've helped."

He grins, cheeky.

"...A bit."

"Oh," he says, pensive, and then very excited about this turn of events. "Well, alright, I'm very happy that you heal quickly." He demonstrates this by placing his arms around Crowley until he's completely well-laden with the softest, fluffiest human there ever was. He's warm and he smells dry, like a pleasant wool and blond woods.

Soon, the whole cabin will be smelling of freshly-baked cake. Songbirds come by, more than the general gull, and Aziraphale extricates himself from Crowley to throw open a window and hear them.

"What do you do now?" he asks. "Now that you're not a priest, I mean?" He did wonder if Crowley had an occupation he had to get back to. Or perhaps he did not, and he could get something to do on land. Or, perhaps he could return to the sea while Aziraphale was away at work, and maybe sometimes he could even join Aziraphale at work. Well, alright, he was getting ahead of himself again.

Crowley clearly likes this, having Aziraphale's arms around him is very comfortable, with the added bonus of both making him steady on new and uncertain limbs and being close to Aziraphale. All good things, as far as he's concerned.

"These days? Whatever I like really. Bit of a disappointment I am, so I'm quite a rogue and outcast, unfit for polite society. Asking all the wrong kinds of questions, and squabbling with authority."

He grins in a way that he hopes is both roguish and charming, but comes off more lopsided and perhaps a bit nervous.

Aziraphale sees the nervousness in his smile and attempts to work a little magic of his own, trying to dispel it by simply placing his head against Crowley's chest and holding him closer.

"Well, we'll have plenty of that up here too, I'm afraid. But surely what's better than being troublesome is having a partner to be troublesome with you, no?" He's a bit of an outcast himself, if Crowley couldn't tell by the hermit lifestyle and the fact that he takes all his research out to sea where no other humans go, if not to just get elsewhere or try to reap the bounty of the ocean.

He'd rather protect it. Learn from it. Understand it. "What would you like to do?" he asks, wondering if Crowley'd ever been asked.

Crowley rubs a soothing trail up and down Aziraphale's back, simply basking in his warmth and how comforting it is to just hold him. Perhaps it's hasty but something had simply clicked when he'd met the human. Like a switch had gone off in his brain and he'd thought Ah. There you are. What I've been looking for. It happens sometimes with merfolk. Sometimes they just know when something feels right.

And Aziraphale feels very right. He rests his cheek on the top of his head, making a small sound of affirmation, because having Aziraphale at his side to make trouble just sounds marvelous.

When Aziraphale asks him what he'd like to do, it becomes apparent Crowley has never been asked this before. Aside from the puzzled sound he makes, he actually draws back, giving Aziraphale an inquisitive look.

"...How do you mean?"

He runs a hand through Crowley's hair and looks at him with inquisitive eyes. "Well, I do have to work sometimes, dear, and I wouldn't want you to be left all alone here. Perhaps we could take you out to sea during those times? I just wouldn't want you to be bored all day."

Crowley seems like the type to need things to do, after all. Aziraphale is also not a man who stays idle; he takes breaks for a few days but then comes back and makes sure everything around the house gets done and then picks up silly projects like learning new languages and translating texts.

Actually, he wonders if he could do so for the merfolk language. That would be something.

"Always wanted to go on one of those big ships," he hums, leaning into the touch. Oh, that is marvelous. If Aziraphale could just keep his fingers in Crowley's hair forever, that would be very, very nice indeed.

"Only ever see 'em from a distance, unless they've sunk. S'not really the same though, is it?"

Aziraphale had read Crowley right. Even without his duties, he was always up to something, even if it was making a nuisance of himself.

"Well, you could come with me to Denmark," he says. "I'll have a ship, and I'll be there for... I'm not sure yet, I don't really think I could stay too long, but we could find work there, perhaps, if you liked it. And dally a bit. I'll ask someone to check up on the cabin."

But then what would happen to Crowley's territory?

"It is pretty far." He pulls out the map again and abandons Crowley's hair for the moment. "Here," he says, pointing to where Copenhagen is, where he's going.

Crowley lights up at the prospect.

"Haven't been traveling in a long time. Would have to hide my horde, of course so no one steals it while I'm away, but I got some good spots."

He bounces unsteadily on the balls of his feet.

"D'you mean it though? I really could go with you?"

He thinks about it and then looks under his bed for a box, opening it up and taking out a handful of coins. "Oh," he says, as he tries to dig for some more coins. "I'm not sure I have enough for passage," he admits, sadly. He had free passage, since he was being sent for research. He'd looked before, and been glad - he could hardly afford to go by himself.

"I'm sorry, Crowley, I shouldn't have told you that you could before... before looking, first." He's definitely short a few coins, and even if he had it all, he'd be flat broke afterwards, and there'd be no money to buy food in Denmark...

Crowley studies the coins curiously.

"You need more of those? I've got loads. I collect the gold and silver ones off wrecks - the rest mostly rust away to nothing."

He looks very pleased with himself that one of his eccentricities could be useful.

"Here, help me get to the water and I'll go get the whole stash. We just melt these things down for jewelry anyway."

Aziraphale blinks at him. "Crowley, those are worth a lot on the surface." He looks at Crowley suddenly, surprised, wondering if this was some sort of a trick. He rifles through his stash and pulls out several coins. "Do you see these big gold ones? I could only make about fifty of these a year," he says. "This is the last one I have."

Is Crowley about to tell him that he's surface wealthy? That he could pay his own way onto the boat passage, that all his human coins were worthless junk to him?

He wondered if underwater, they traded seashells or something for currency, because those were something Aziraphale collected a lot of.

"Are they? Metal isn't worth much for us unless it's useful. Never lasts, and what doesn't rust to bits will weigh you down. It's shells, bones, pearls, or bartering underwater."

He grins, realizing that he could probably help Aziraphale out in a big way.

"Got about two chests of those big gold ones, and just under five bags of the little silver ones. Didn't know they were valuable - I just thought they were, I don't know, little good luck tokens. Like how young merfolk'll wear shark teeth to ward off predators. Pretty but kind of useless."

"Oh, I suppose metal isn't worth much to merfolk," he admits, thinking about it. "But it... is to us. Gold, especially. It's-- yes, it's worth quite a lot."

He did know that there were several people who were treasure hunters, humans who lost their lives just looking for this old buried treasure.

"And I've got plenty of shells, if you'd like to look through them, if there are any that might be of use. No bones."

Kind of morbid to have bones as a currency, but he knows that they used to as well, a long, long time ago.

"Really now?"

Well, that explains a lot. No wonder he finds so much on big ship wrecks.

"How do you carry it all about? Don't you have to walk all over? Oh - do you break up your hoard and store it in separate locations, so even if someone finds a bit of it, they can never steal it all...?"

He looks very eager and excited to know how humans store their treasures. Maybe he'd write up a treatise on human behaviour patterns. They really were quite interesting.

"Well, we've switched over to paper," he says. "The paper just says that you're owed a certain amount. But sometimes you can take it out and change it for coins."

"But the gold and silver, it's worth so much on the surface. A brick full of it would buy more than a house!" he explains. It would allow both of them to live comfortably for a long time, do whatever they wanted, basically.

Maybe Aziraphale would be able to do his own research privately. And maybe Crowley could get all the strawberries he ever wanted.

He looks at Crowley with big, wide eyes. He must've accidentally wished on a genie, to be given not only the gift of such a lovely, clever and interesting partner, but also one who happened to be incredibly wealthy. Was he perfect? He leans in close, as if trying to pick any out.

"I guess a house is expensive then?" asks Crowley who's only ever built his den in underwater caves.

Slowly, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, he makes his wobbly way back to Aziraphale's side, sitting next to him.

"This stuff would help you right? With your research? Because I can bring it to you. And I know where to find the big bars of the stuff - they're pretty heavy, but there was a ship that sunk that had a whole box full of them."

He likes this - being useful. Being able to give Aziraphale things that will help him.

"Oh, yes," he says, looking a little bashful. This little hut took him several years to purchase, and it's certainly not a real house. Not the kind that he would've liked to buy someday for a spouse and children, back when he'd thought that he might do that someday.

"Can I come to help you bring them up?" he asks. "I'd like to help even a little bit." He isn't really helping, but to be fair, humans did bring that gold out to sea, and it doesn't really belong to anyone, so he can't feel guilty about taking it.

Crowley considers this, then nods, slowly.

"It's a ways out, deep under the ocean. We'll have to get you swimming, and one of these -"

He taps the magical pendant around his neck.

"-because a few drops of my blood isn't going to cut it for this kind of trip."

He smiles, bumping his head up against Aziraphale's shoulder.

"No rush though - we'll talk more about it when you're comfortable being in the water."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject