Celtic Sea Wych

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About five hours into their first road trip as a couple (of celestial beings fully cut off from their respective Head Office's miracle accounts), Aziraphale had a horrifying realization.

"Oh, f...iddlesticks," he sighed, choosing cowardice at the last second.

(It was, in fact, no such thing; Aziraphale was simply a man(shaped being) who appreciated the greater impact made by a judicious bit of profanity, used sparingly. Specifically, its impact on Crowley, in situations not involving quite so much clothing. Or the operation of a motor vehicle, excepting that one ill-fated incident, of which they Do Not Speak.)

There was a soft, amused huff to his right.

"What's got you almost saying the naughty words, Angel?"

"Ah, well. Er, do you recall, when you asked me to pack the alcohol, and I told you that I would after just one more page?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, I did!" Aziraphale recounted proudly.

"Okay..."

"Well, alright, it was one hundred more pages, if you must know."

"Must I?"

"But then I went straight to the cabinet and gathered up all the alcoholic beverages we could possibly need for three days away--"

Crowley made a noise of dismay.

"We'll run out by morning!"

"--and then tripled it--"

"Ehhh, okay, that should get us to Sunday."

"--and packed it securely away into that lovely insulated carrying case!"

Aziraphale could nearly see the suspicion creeping over his dear demon's face.

"And the case is...?" Crowley prompted.

Well, no point in stalling any further.

"...sitting right inside the front door," Aziraphale finished lamely.

Silence.

"So, no alcohol tonight," Crowley paraphrased mournfully.

"Well, we could always stop somewhere and get some," Aziraphale pointed out. "It's barely half past five"

Crowley made a face.

"Nnnnyeah, but the shops'll be busy, traffic might be bad."

"Ah, yes, quite true," Aziraphale sighed, unable to argue with this ironclad logic.

"Dunno, Angel, I think the only thing we can do is just swerve off this bridge here."

Aziraphale considered this for a moment.

"Well, I certainly see no viable alternative. Terribly sorry to have killed us both with my negligence, dear boy."

"Eh, we had a good run."

"Off we go, then."

With a nod of confirmation, Crowley gave the wheel a sharp, sudden twist. The two shared a long, tender look and weird finger kiss as they crashed through the guard rail and into the open air below.

"Sodding hell, not again," the Bentley thought crossly as she gathered up the last vestiges of magic stashed in the glove box for just such an occasion, and sailed herself and her two beloved idiot passengers to safety. "I'm going to find the person who told Dad and Dad about Thelma & Louise, and run over them SO HARD."

---

Honestly, I love these ridiculous costumes to pieces! It's not stated explicitly, but still strongly implied that Aziraphale must have miracled up this exact color-inverted replica of Crowley's usual outfit, right down to all the little details, like the snake skin boots and the snake belt!

Seriously, Crowley's torso was relatively easy to design for me, because it is a copy of his usual outfit, so I dug up my old torso design file and edited the hell out of it (literally) before getting it printed on a Tan LEGO torso. The rounded bottom part of his jacket covering the hips was meticulously cut and folded out of painted paper. The colours actually match better than it looks in these pictures.

The boots were giving me the biggest challenge here! I could not just have them printed on some LEGO legs, because I wanted to use those longer custom legs by Leyilebrick, the only valid option for Crowley in those bloody tight jeans, imo. Ahem.

So, yeah, recreating snake skin boots in LEGO minifigure scale? Shoot me now! Well, the results are far from perfect, but I tried my best. It really would have helped to have hi-res screencaps, but I still haven't found any, so most of the creative process was squinting at blurry enlarged images, a huge dose of 'best guess' and a lot of swearing! Oh, also acrylic markers and masking tape, of course! 🤷

Crowley's hair used to be this custom hairpiece before I painted the hell out of it. Unfortunately it's not available anymore. I'd love to get my hands on more of those pieces for other versions of Crowley!

Credit for the head goes to Minifigs.me! I bought and "beheaded" their Prince of Darkness minifigure, because those round golden sunglasses looked like a great match! I might have taken a teeny-tiny bit of secret pleasure in this act of revenge on behalf of some mistreated bat(s). *looking around innocently* 🦇

Ah, Lord Archduke Slorch the Vile, my beloved! Seriously, this costume is so horrible I can't help but love it! How, and I mean how the fuck, could Aziraphale come off genuinely intimidating in this ridiculous Joker mock-up?! Thank you for your acting skills, Michael Sheen! 🤡

People who know me and my bloody annoying perfectionism had a good laugh at my struggle to not get anything about this one perfect. Let his face be smudged. Let his teeth be sharp, but don't try to fix them any further. Let those silver chains dangle crookedly. Let his half gloves look ragged. Use the most ugly colours for his hairpiece (taken from this minifig) and don't worry about a smooth finish. Let his coat and shoulder pads look torn. Let him look horrible and own it! A Master of the Secret Torments, indeed! *still apologizing to my inner Monk who died a million times in the process of making this minifigure*

Anyway, I'm really grateful I had at least one BTS picture to work with here. Slorch's clompy (why isn't that an official word?) boots are hilarious! Initially I used some off-brand legs with printed boots and added some 1x1 plates for the high soles, but it didn't look that great. In addition those legs were too loose for the LEGO hips with the silver belt, making the whole figure fall over again and again, so I ultimately ditched those and just stole a pair of Crowley's long legs (the husbands really don't mind sharing). Since all the printed details from the other legs were almost completely hidden by the coat anyway, this solution works for me.

"Credit" for the head and torso: I took this Joker head and this LEGO torso and ruined modified the shit out of them! No idea if the way I painted the face is suggestion enough of the big mismatched nose, but whatever. Fun fact: if you'd pull off Lord Slorch's coat, you might still find the HARES OF HAVOC print on the backside, which I found too funny to remove! 🐇

All the dangly bits around the hips, the coat itself with its shoulder pads, and the chains dangling form the collar are made of masking tape and painted with acrylic markers. The spiked collar around the neck used to be on of these boring LEGO neck collars before I repurposed it lovingly! 🔪

Hopefully I didn't forget anything important. Feel free to ask if I did.

🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍

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Tagging the usual crowd with the customary addendum to please let me know if you want to be added to or removed from the list! 😘

@di-42 @snognes @ineffablepretzel @phoen1xr0se @thatineffablewitch @ineffablyruined @lickthecowhappy @caminholonge @gallup24 @tickety-boooo @waitingtobebroken @ineffablecrow @neversam23 @juliette-tango @crowleysgirl56 @hellsgardener01 @lookingatacupoftea @the-oak-branch-nebula @just-sauntered-vaguely-downwards @lutraslutra @fumblingbuffoon @naturallyteal @melancholicrowley @bl0ndwave @victorian-undead @vidavalor @ezra-didntreallyfall @simonezitrone79 @confusedtoadsworld @darlsbardlife @imfruity5432 @ineffable-xenanigans @handyowlet @ineffablequeermoony @fellshish @funnyoldworld-isnt-it @nimbusalba @ladybracknellssherry @tamsinswriting @dracadancer

“angel.”

“it was a gift, if you must know, white elephant gone horribly, horribly wrong, and then i couldn’t bring myself to donate it, one can never have too much drinkware—”

“aziraphale, shut up a moment, would you, and look.”

to the angel’s credit, he shuts up and looks.

memory is a funny thing, unreliable, easily eroded. crowley would have sworn, cross his char-blackened heart, that the tree was taller. in his mind, the branches extend like reverent hands towards the heavens, heavy with fruit, wide and green and swallowing up the whole sky. he is very small, beneath it.

aziraphale’s hand finds his shoulder. “oh.”

“yeah.”

“well, that’s…certainly a design choice. did we…?”

“who else? we’re all that’s left.” but no, that’s not quite right. the dickens. crowley scoops it up, flips it open, then keeps flipping, eyes dancing over pages that are no longer empty.

next to him, aziraphale frowns into his mug. “but how? if this is some sort of, of…cosmic leg-pull, i confess i’m failing to see the—” his face goes blank, then lights up like a christmas tree, a study in giddy. “oh! oh, of course. even the dickens.”

“it was you.” crowley takes his time with the words, feeling each one rush through him. an equal yet opposite kind of flood. “you named him, and it brought him back.”

they gaze at each other, stunned.

“we need more books,” says crowley, at the same time that aziraphale declares, “we need more cocoa.”

and so it goes. they start with the classics, squabbling over semantics (“for the last time, crowley, twilight does not count. i don’t care how many copies were sold worldwide.”) they brave the jeffrey archers. they pore over encyclopedias, scraping their teeth on words like lithospheric mantle, reveling in the euphony of sonoluminescence. and something peculiar starts to happen, a sort of field of dreams situation.

people start happening.

they’re the only thing that could, really. if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it matter? the tree was there; the knowledge was there. it was real. it existed, in spite of. because of. what use does humanity have for a book that tells them, yes, you can be, i will allow it, i will permit it. we create our own mythos, simply by living, by looking at the rorschach blob and finding joy in the mess, beauty in the mundane. you’ve seen the post: forty-thousand years ago, humans stenciled their handprints on the wall of a cave, and this morning, my niece learned to fingerpaint. 

so yes, people start happening. friends curl up in the shop’s back room, trashing oprah’s book club pick of the month. lovers spin in a slow circle beneath the oculus as fred astaire croons from the gramophone. someone brings up the duct-taped banana (“how fucking pretentious. anyone could do that shit.” “yeah, but they didn’t. this dude did. in this essay, i will—”), and someone else says, have some art nouveau, maybe you’ll calm down, and the far atrium is suddenly a tribute to klimt, bursting with geometric golds and ornamental greens. in the foyer, a young man teaches amateur card tricks from a folding table that aziraphale will swear up and down isn’t his; the tag on his jumper reads, hi, my name is josh. here, a neolithic wheel. there, a 7th-century chaturanga board. paul blart: mall cop, wedged between the self-helps and memoirs. people begetting creation begetting people, an ouroboros of abracadabra, creating as they speak, until the bookshop is overflowing with it. bursting at the seams with humanity. the world is remade here, in the gaps between stanzas of that shitty poem you wrote when you were twelve, in the canned laughter on your best friend’s favorite sitcom. i am trying to get the seas back on the maps, where they belong. i am trying to love the world back to normal. we survive through storytelling, that ineffable collision of necessity and ingenuity, anchoring the world like the roots of a great tree. we tell stories to remind ourselves that we are alive. we are here.

slowly but surely, the void beyond the bookshop’s windows begins to brighten. human hands stitch the universe back together. and a small eternity later, crowley and aziraphale pull the stream of time around themselves like a cocoon, and rest.

“there’s nothing to forgive, you know,” crowley says. “i know i was flippant about it before, but the truth is— we were both a little bit right, in the end. weren’t we?”

“and a little bit wrong,” aziraphale agrees.

there is sunlight, their time-adjacent bubble. it catches in aziraphale’s cloud of curls, limning him in gold. not a halo, but a frame. the contour of a face and form freely chosen. every day for the rest of our lives, we’ll get to choose, crowley will think, the realization settling just behind his ribs. how about that.

he sees it, the moment aziraphale realizes it too.

“actually i take it back.” crowley grins, and the space between them contracts, then shrinks, a star collapsing. “yeah, i’d like an apology for the pointy teeth. my culture’s not your costume, angel.”

aziraphale’s smile is luminous. “crowley. beloved.”

“hm?”

“shut up a moment, would you, and kiss me. properly, this time.”

“such hard work,” says crowley, and he does. there might be supernovas. maybe another big bang. nobody is around to see it, celestial, infernal, or otherwise, but that’s alright. it exists, it has always existed. here, in the kitchen, loving the world. steadfastly loving.