logsinthenight | We Are the Champions, My Friend || Closed

Entry tags:

We Are the Champions, My Friend || Closed

characters: Crowley and Aziraphale
location: The Village, Miner's Castle #3
date/time: Evening after the arrival of new people
content: An angel and a demon make excellent use of their time and several bottles of alcohol.
warnings: None

Crowley doesn't have any need of money. Money has never been something that's ever been a necessary point in his life. If he's wanted something, he's just made it available to himself. He has had a credit card with an unlimited balance that he's never had to pay off at any point, and that was useful when Amazon came around, but other than that, he's just never needed it. Therefore, no need for a wallet. He didn't have one on him when he woke up on that ship, either.

He can just miracle money, but he's a bit worried about being too flip with his miracles here. After all, he doesn't know how much he is allowed to do while he's here. He creates just enough money to buy supplies, but no more, just in case it's too much of a miracle. How much is too much? What are his limits? He certainly can't create more light, which is really, really disconcerting.

What's also disconcerting is hunger. Crowley has never been hungry before, and suddenly, that's all he feels. A gnawing ache in his stomach that he is hyperfocused on while they're in the general store, and focused on as he picks out a few supplies to eat back at their new residence. He also has purchased some alcohol, because that is what he definitely needs right now.

After all, he and his best friend just died today.

He holds up one of the canned peaches he's purchased and looks at it through the lantern light. The cabin is sparse, but it isn't dusty anymore, at least.

"So, what? You just eat it and you stop feeling this way?" he asks Aziraphale. Crowley has eaten many times in the past, but it was never out of hunger. It was because he was going somewhere with Aziraphale and the angel wanted to share a meal with him. He ate, and it was pleasant enough, but it never really meant anything either way to him. Now, he stares at the peach on the fork and can feel himself salivate. He takes a drink of the cheap wine purchased from the general store. No body, not a great year, and definitely not something he'd have picked for himself. But it'll do in a pinch.

"Is this how we're going to have to live? Eating?"

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"I don't know, angel, I'm sure we can just make some more money when we get there," he says, slipping on his sunglasses. "Or were you worried about actually having enough money? Because I didn't have my wallet on me in Hell."

He leans against the door, looking at the angel expectantly. "There have to be other ways to get things around here. Nobody here has a job or anything. And I am not getting a job."

"What do you mean? We might have to work! It's not so bad. I do like running the book shop. You could garden. You're very good with plants, I'm sure people would pay you loads of money to take care of their plants."

He locks up the house as they make their way outside. "Honestly Crowley, it's nice. You get hours, you get paid, you get little breaks to take!"

"I had a job for six thousand years, angel, and then they killed me for it," he says, walking next to Aziraphale. "I've decided that's probably the end of working for me for the forseeable future."

He could garden. He could do that. But why would he? He's not going to stay here long. They're going to get out of here, get Aziraphale back to his bookshop.

"How did you get paid at the bookshop, anyway? Did you ever actually sell any of your books?"

"Oh yes, one or two. Only when I needed to, you know. Horrible thing, I parted with a first-edition Tale of Two Cities only to later discover they had completely destroyed it. Let it get wet! Awful."

They would get back to Earth soon, but then Crowley would need a job then, too. After they dispatched Heaven and Hell for the second time. He'd have to eventually! But that was at least a month off.

"Oh, should we have brought a basket?"

This feels particularly domestic. Crowley's never been a domestic sort, except with Aziraphale. Going out to dinners, out to plays. It's always felt particularly natural to them. Even this, going out grocery shopping. It's like they've always been a pair, always done this.

"Nah, we'll be all right," he says. "I doubt we'll be able to cook anything like what you're used to, though."

Though Crowley will certainly try. Aziraphale can't live on tinned food alone. The angel has discerning tastes.

Domestic is a good word for it, but domestic is something that Aziraphale does well. "If you say so, you're the expert." Isn't that a scary thought?

"We'll need a pan, I think. And a knife. You need a knife to crack an egg, correct? But it's so round, how do you stand it up?"

They are doomed.

"Why do you need a knife to crack an egg?" Crowley asks, looking at Aziraphale as though the angel has grown three heads. "Did you see that at a show or something?"

He considers just eating eggs a thing that should be done, but he's spent part of his life as a snake, so that makes perfect sense to him.

"Let's walk the long way, past the bonfire," he suggests.

"Oh, yes, I do like the bonfire," he says, ever so agreeable. "And no, I haven't seen it on a show, but I imagine that's how it's supposed to be done. If you just crack it in the bowl, won't you have to fish out the egg shells?

"They are very brittle, raw."

That he does know, for a fact. He's very proud of having known that fact, actually, since he knows so little about cooking for the fact that he eats just about any sort of prepared food.

Crowley never thought about it that way. He has never actually cracked an egg on his own, so he supposes it's as good a reason as any to use a knife. The learning curve for cooking, he imagines, can't be that steep.

"I don't imagine they have a lot of fresh food here," he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he saunters vaguely in the direction of the bonfire. "Everything seems very...survival of the fittest. Getting only what they can get their hands on and that sort of thing."

"There's some at the grocery!" he exclaims. "Not much at the general store, though. Unfortunately." But some food was better than no food, and if they could turn their cooked food back into ingredients, then at least he wouldn't have to be afraid that they might be hogging up precious resources.

"But we'll need to go by the general store to pick up kitchen supplies, of course." Of course.

"Mixing bowls. I hope they have nice mixing bowls."

"Oh, they've got a grocery?" Crowley says, sounding especially unimpressed. "Proper little town, this is. Maybe we'll get you some cocoa."

Crowley doesn't cook. He has---had----the most spectacular kitchen back in his flat, but it was never used. It just sat there, being all modern and expensive and pretty, and he never used it. Never needed to. Now, for the first time, he needs to cook, and he doesn't even have an avocado slicer like he does back at home.

"Do we know what we don't have?" he asks. "That's a thing, isn't it? Know what you don't know---know what you don't have? What we need in order to survive, do we have everything?"

Why would Crowley even own an avocado slicer.... Aziraphale thinks about it, and starts to panic with Crowley as well, because the two of them are the worst. "No, I didn't look in our cupboards to make sure we had anything. I don't even know what we'll need. A blender, maybe? I think we'll need a blender. And uh, ah, tasting spoons. Yes, that's very important."

He wracks his brain but for some reason there's a huge blocker there, like there had been content related to cooking at some point in time, but it's behind a paywall. "A pie pan? We'll need a pie pan?"

Crowley looks at Aziraphale very seriously.

"Are you going to bake a pie?"

"Yes, why not? I haven't seen anywhere selling pie, but how hard could it be? Every shop has to make hundreds of them daily, it can't be that hard for me to make just the one."

At least he's not trying to go for broke and make the food they usually get at the Ritz. Can you imagine?

Not even sure Aziraphale could make avocado toast. Not without Crowley's slicer.

"Don't you need----"

He gestures, because he genuinely doesn't know.

"I don't know. Butter. Ingredients. Things that we can't find here. Can we even get butter here?"

Back when restaurants weren't really a thing, Crowley just didn't eat. Now he's got to eat and he can't imagine having to do this every day with only limited supplies.

"Flour, butter.... um." He thinks. "Pork. Oh, pork fat, probably. You know, I wonder if there are any frozen pigs, I'm sure we could hack it, Crowley. It only took humans a few years to invent cooking, surely with all their knowledge we won't have to reinvent the wheel!"

Technically, they could buy the ingredients and then just cast a few miracles, but no one tell Aziraphale this.

"Yes, but first they were doing things like porridge for hundreds of years. Do you even remember all of the porridge? Porridge and meats and that was it. That was just barely cooking."

He cringes at the very idea and gives the angel a pitiful look.

"If it weren't for you, I'd probably hate it here."

"Porridge and meat isn't so bad, and we'll learn! Crowley." He gives him an exasperated look. He knows that, if Crowley weren't here, he'd probably fall to pieces, mostly because he'd assume that Crowley was dead and gone, his soul destroyed, off to the ether. So he can't say anything about that, but. "We don't have very many choices. I'll make you a good pie. You'll like it." He's trying so hard.

Crowley can tell Aziraphale is trying. For all that Crowley is a hundred percent certain they're going to do Very Badly at this, he can't fault Aziraphale. And he knows Aziraphale will try to make him a good pie. It will probably be complete rubbish, but he'll eat it, because it was made by the angel and Crowley loves everything the angel does. Even the rubbish bits. Not that he'll admit it, of course.

"All right, angel," he says, giving him a genuine smile. "We'll get the ingredients for a pie."

He has too much power and knows that he'll always get whatever he wants as far as Crowley is concerned, but it's a dynamic that works for them. And if Aziraphale wants to abuse his power to try and make them something nice to eat, why deny him?

He gives an acknowledging grin and keeps heading over; they're rounding on the bonfire now. "What did you want to come here for? Just to take a look?"

Crowley steps ahead and stops in front of the bonfire. It's large and blazing and incredibly warm. Its light shines in his sunglasses. He wonders, idly, if this is the sort of thing they set up for Aziraphale in Heaven when they killed him. A bonfire like this, only with Hellfire. He supposes he'll never know.

"It's the only place around here with any light," he says. "People camp here, we meet here----if that lightkeeper, whatever she is, says that the forest spirits are attracted to light, this is our most vulnerable place."

It indeed was like this, but Aziraphale had been resigned to it when he walked into the flame. He'd held his head up high, he'd told the angels it was nice knowing them, and he'd taken his last breath and walked into the flames with his dignity intact.

This, felt nothing like hellfire had.

"Alright. That I understand, but... why would you want us to be here?"

Why? He wants to see it. He wants to see what he is pretty sure will destroy the town. One great big flame, all light and warmth, and it will bring them all down in the end.

He's not going to be here to see it happen. He's getting them out of here.

"Just wanted a look," he says. "Let's go."

"Well. Alright, then," he says, a little confused but. Crowley's always been a little strange, and Aziraphale's always just let it go, he doesn't see a reason to belabor the point.

He does hang back as Crowley starts leaving though, entranced by the flame, and has to jog to catch up with him. Instinctually, he runs past and takes his hand. It's a casual gesture, just doesn't want to be left behind. That's all.

Crowley pauses in his walk to look down at their hands, entwined. Walking around town, holding hands. No more sitting with big spaces between them on park benches, no more lunches in the back of crowded restaurants. They could just be.

It would be nice while it lasted.

He curls his fingers around the angel's. "What sort of pie are you going to make? And how are we going to bake it?"

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