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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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?"

"Oh, I was thinking a pork pie but a lamb shank would be scrumptious. I don't think we'll find any lamb at the grocery, however."

"And I don't know, we'll turn the oven on I suppose, and put the tin with the pie in it. And wait for it to smell nice in the house. That's how we'll know it's ready! And..." he thinks back through all his memories. "We have to put a slip of paper in it, and if it turns brown in a minute, it's hot enough."

Crowley raises an eyebrow dubiously. "Is that how you know it's ready?" he says. "I thought you timed it. I do have a timer on my mobile, we can always use that."

He's not about to argue with the angel, though. He can only hope they have some sort of fresh meat at this grocery. After eating tinned food, he wouldn't mind something fresher. Funny, actually missing fresh food markets, when on Earth he mostly saw them as things that got in the Bentley's way when he was speeding.

Funny how those things worked out. "But how much time should we put on your timer?" he asks. "That's the problem. We'll have to learn by intuition."

At least it's not a far way to the store. "Ah, there it is. See? It's got the big windows. Can't miss it."

Crowley does see it, and takes a bit of a breath. Grocery shopping. How ridiculously human of them.

Hastur would laugh to see how far Crowley had fallen. Then again, Hastur never had a friend in his life, and Crowley still has Aziraphale.

"Let's not get too much," he warns. "Just enough for one day, a few small meals."

"Yes, there's still a whole town to feed, we won't take too much." He lets go of Crowley's hand to grab a shopping basket, and walks into the dark grocery store, holding up his lantern to see around the shelves. At least it still smells like a bakery in the bread aisle.

He's very grateful for that.

"Flour, butter, meat... Oh, is this why humans have shopping lists?" he asks, to Crowley but also no one in particular.

"Hang on, hang on---" Crowley pulls out his mobile and flips it to a list app. He can't get his mobile to connect to anything, but he'll be damned (again) if he doesn't make it do useful things. "Tell me what we need. Flour, butter, meat, probably some sort of vegetable, right? And you need tea and cocoa..."

There's nothing on the finer side of life in this store, though. None of the single-malt scotches and the expensive chocolates that they lived their lives with in London before. Probably couldn't even get oysters here.

He considers some of the vegetables. They could be grown again, he thinks. Some of the seeds, a bit of dirt. If they don't need light, then they could be easily grown.

"Apricots," he says. "Dried apricots, possibly a recipe book or something so we don't make a mess of it. And pork, obviously, for pork pies, I'd think. Tea and cocoa for my pies?

"--Oh, in general. Yes, tea and cocoa. That we'll need extra of, I like to give treats to some of the spirits. I think they'll help us, but we need to be careful with them."

No, this was definitely not a place they could get oysters, but it couldn't be so bad to live like this for a few years. They've done worse for themselves. The entire fourteenth century, perhaps, was undoubtedly worse.

The fourteenth century was so bad that Crowley slept through most of it.

"Oh, don't tell me you're going to try to make them your friends," Crowley says, rolling his eyes. "Oh, they're just annoying little creatures with itty-bitty monster bits, they can't help us. They could probably hurt us in big enough groups, though! We can't try to make them our friends."

But that's just like Aziraphale, isn't it? Trying to make friend with the local monsters. Consider his friendship with Crowley, after all.

"Oh, don't say that. That's how I used to feel about your lot, you know." But then he looks at Crowley to make sure that he knows he doesn't still feel this way. Might be hard to mistake it, considering Aziraphale is still holding onto his hand, but he'd forgotten sometimes.

He lets go to open the door. "After you."

"My lot is a bunch of annoying itty-bitty monster bits," Crowley says. "They did execute me. Not a fan, remember?"

He stuffs his mobile back in his pocket and reaches for the door, holding it open for Aziraphale.

"And they're not my lot. Haven't been for a long time, really."

"Right. Now-- now I'm your lot, I suppose." He walks in, and then grabs a basket. "Sure we couldn't buy any bread?" he asks, nose taking him over to the bakery.

Eventually, he makes his way around to finding the things they do need, but he'd picked up one or more things that were definitely nonessentials...

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I actually think they were already inside whoops