Archive of Our Own ^beta

No matter what his family might tell you, Crowley isn’t obsessed with the surface world. He’s not. 

It’s just that he gets bored so easily, and the seabirds tell him all kinds of interesting stories about faraway places, and the kingdom on the coast, from what Crowley can glimpse of it, is always bustling with busy bodies and bright colors that put the dim and dreary seabed to absolute shame.

And maybe he has a bit of a collection growing in his garden; pretty stoneware and bits of blown glass and the little trinkets he can salvage from ships sunk close to his home. The best find, and the one he spent the better part of an hour convincing Hastur to help him drag back to the palace, is the marble statue that stands as tall as Crowley is long.

It isn’t fully intact; it’s missing an arm, and some of the face has fallen away, but it is still so lovely that Crowley winds up staring at it for long minutes at a time. Sometimes he finds himself reaching for it, half-convinced that the smooth stone might give under his fingers the way living flesh would. 

Magic, he thinks. It must be. 

“Humans don’t have magic, stupid,” Hastur told him shortly when Crowley first aired the idea. “They live for barely a hundred years and don’t do anything interesting at all.”

“Magic belongs down here, with us,” Ligur added. “That’s where you belong, too, no matter how often you stare at the sky and wish you were someplace else.”

Belonging or not, there really isn’t much for the youngest prince to do. He makes some trouble here and there to keep things interesting, he trades gossip with the porpoises and the seabirds, he asks about a hundred more questions than his brothers would prefer every day—about the humans, and the clothes they wear, and the curious flatware they use to eat off of, and the hard leather bindings Crowley finds on the shelves of some sunken ships’ cabins, bindings that are full of an awful pulpy mess when he opens them, what on earth could those be for?—and he tends his garden.

And it’s in the garden that Crowley’s life changes once and for all, not that he’s entirely aware of it then.

He is bargaining with one of his newer plants, a finicky red sea whip that Bee brought him that simply refuses to take root in its new home, when sudden darkness falls. A whale, Crowley thinks at first, peering up at the passing shadow, but he knows right away that his guess is off. The resident pod isn’t meant to be in this area today, and they don’t know how to go anywhere without making a racket that announces them from a mile away. 

Curiosity gets the best of him, as it always does. Crowley carefully untangles himself from the soft, fragile arms of the coral and chases pale moonlight toward the surface. When he breaches, blinking water out of his eyes and shoving the hair out of his face, he’s met with the stern of a grand ship, like the ones sleeping in broken halves on the seafloor. 

Oh, it’s amazing. It groans and creaks as it bears its humans across the sea, and the sail is as big and white as any towering cloud, and the banner flags fly above everything else, snapping proudly in the summer wind. The humans on board are dancing and singing, a tiny speck of noise and light on an otherwise dark and quiet sea. 

A sudden clumsy splash announces the arrival of Crowley’s best friend, a tiny Harlequin duck named Bentley. 

She wonders aloud what Crowley thinks he’s doing up here without a babysitter. He’s still only seventeen years old, and that’s a full year shy of being allowed to come up to the surface on his own. And it’s awfully boring when he gets himself grounded and she has no one to talk to, you know.

Crowley waves her off. “I had to come see, didn’t I? Just look at it!”

‘You’ve seen one boat, you’ve seen them all,’ Bentley says frankly. ‘Oh, okay,’ she adds, as Crowley finds a handhold on the side of the ship and begins to hoist himself up, ‘this is what we’re doing now.’

“If you want to make yourself useful, you could be a lookout,” he snaps.

‘Who said I wanted to do that?’ But she takes off anyway, flying effortlessly up to the railing of the main deck. 

For Crowley, it’s a little harder. His arms are burning from the strain of supporting his entire body weight, and his wet hair alone feels like an anchor. All the work he does in the garden, and all his lugging around of contraband treasures, has given him just enough upper body strength to make this possible, but it’s far from easy, and he probably looks stupid. If he had even an inch more self-respect, he would have given up before he started.

But he explores sunken ships almost daily, and he’s familiar enough with the anatomy of them to know that there is a little opening somewhere along the edge of the main deck that will make a perfect window for him to peer through. 

Bentley looks reluctantly impressed when Crowley finally manages to wedge himself into place with a victorious little flip of his fins. There’s a protruding lip of wood along the hull that makes a decent shelf for him to sit on, the upper half of his tail curled against his chest and the bottom half dangling uncomfortably. He rests his weight on it tentatively, and when he doesn’t slip off, slumps there with an exhausted moan.

‘Shh!’ Bentley hisses at him. ‘You are hanging off the side of a human ship! While humans are on it! You could at least pretend to care if you get caught!’

“That’s what I have a lookout for!” he hisses back, and they glare at each other for a full six seconds. 

Then Crowley’s attention is stolen away by the sheer spectacle of a party taking place on the deck. He turns, twisting his upper body so that he can staring through the scupper with wide eyes, and tries to take it all in. 

There’s a whole school of people spinning about and kicking up their feet and singing as loud as the day is long. They move about with ease despite the heaving of the ship, boldly at home on the sea despite their lack of fins and gills and tails. It’s very audacious, and Crowley admires them for it. 

Well, Crowley amends a second later, most of them. 

There is a human boy about Crowley’s age clinging to the rail with all his might. He’s pale and round and full, his curly hair blown into absurdity by the wind. He reminds Crowley of those fluffy jellyfish with delicate white bells and deceivingly soft-looking arms. 

Crowley can’t take his eyes off of him. 

A larger human is impatiently trying to herd the boy along, but his slow and steady pace doesn’t change.

“—was perfectly happy in the cabin,” the boy is saying unhappily. “You know I don’t care for parties like this. And I don’t like boats.”

“And as the crown prince of a coastal kingdom, you see the problem there, right?” the larger one says shortly. “You’re gonna give yourself a ‘hermit king’ legacy and you’re not even king yet.”

The two pass right by Crowley’s scupper and he ducks away, straining to hear them over the sound of the crew’s merry-making. 

“Why don’t you let me worry about my legacy, and you just worry about—whatever it is you’re supposed to worry about,” the voice that belongs to the boy says in a tone familiar to Crowley from all the times he’s heard Beelzebub use it; exhausted from having asked the same thing at least a hundred times before, with faint hope that something might come of it this time. “For the one-thousandth time, I don’t need a minder, Gabriel.”

The larger human—Gabriel—snorts rudely. “I sincerely disagree. Or have you forgotten about the cloak?”

“Oh, for the love of God,” the boy mutters. 

A few good-natured jeers and hoots rise up from some of the other humans nearby. Crowley can’t help himself; he leans back in to sneak a peek through the little window, wanting to be a part of the conversation with an urgency that blindsides him. The boy has an arm looped securely through one of the sturdy knots in the shroud beside him as though he means to hang on for dear life, but that doesn’t stop him from glaring woundedly at the crowd beginning to gather around him. 

“Come on, Prince Fell, let’s hear it,” one of the sailors says cheerfully. “Gabe’s gonna turn blue in the face from all this effort of keeping his mouth shut.”

“Do tell it,” Crowley whispers. The rushing wind and roaring sea snatch his voice away before it can even dream of reaching the boy’s ears, but Bentley turns her head sideways to glare down at him anyway.

“It was a gaudy old thing,” the boy—the prince—says haughtily. “It probably never would have been missed, either, if Gabriel hadn’t insisted on making me pose in it when I sat for that dreadful portrait.”

“Gaudy, he says. It was precious regalia, commissioned by your grandfather, embroidered with gold and enough jewels to buy this royal vessel of yours twice over!” Gabriel throws his hands up, fully exasperated. “And what did you do?”

The prince balls his fists and indignantly declares, “I gave it away!”

Crowley sucks in a breath. 

“That poor lady looked so miserable, and it was going to be so cold that night, and she was expecting! The carriage is such an intimidating thing I didn’t blame her for turning down a ride home, so I said here you go, warm cloak, don’t thank me—oh, stop laughing! It was the right thing to do.”

The crew is laughing, but there’s no cruelty to be heard anywhere. Their faces are bright and warm, and they look upon their young lord with what Crowley would call genuine affection. 

Gabriel, on the other hand, is palming his forehead. “You know she probably turned around and sold it off the very next day.”

Fell says, “Well I wouldn’t expect her to wear it. It was hideous, Gabriel.”

“Did you hear?” Crowley asks Bentley when she comes to land beside him. “About that cloak or whatever it was? He gave it away!”

‘Yes, it sounded very stupid of him,’ the duck says generously. ‘So naturally you’re impressed, aren’t you?’

Crowley doesn’t bother denying it. 

‘We ought to go now,’ she goes on. ‘You’re really pressing your luck, you know.’ 

She’s right. He’s been hanging off the side of the ship for long enough that the moon has moved a little ways, and just surfacing near it in the first place would have been enough to send his brothers into a furious meltdown. Reluctantly, Crowley turns for one last look at Prince Fell—ruffled and precious in all his finery—and then lets go of his perch and plunges back into the sea. 

‘Are you going home?’ she asks, bobbing on the water. 

“Not yet,” he replies eagerly. “I want to watch them sail back to the harbor.”

Bentley can’t physically roll her eyes, but she flips her beak in a manner that gets the same idea across. 

‘The wind is changing. It’s going to be dangerous to stay here for much longer.’

Dangerous for me or them? Crowley wants to ask. He doesn’t, mostly because he’s worried of what she might answer.

So he stays and watches, eyes and nose above the water while his hair fans out like strangled lengths of kelp. On board, the humans have raised the alarm. Their voices rise and fall in different patterns than when they were singing and shouting with joy. He can’t make out any one figure in particular, but he gets the sense that they’re all scurrying across the deck and struggling with lines of rope, furling the mainsail before it can swallow the furious gale and pitch them this way and that. 

The waves were already choppy and now they’ve taken a turn toward violent. Crowley’s having a hard time deciding if it would be easier to breathe with lungs or gills, and he’s starting to think maybe it was a bad idea to come up here after all. 

And then lightning splits the sky. 

The whole world is illuminated for a fleeting moment, everything turned stark white and thrown into harsh contrast. And the humans start screaming, and Crowley realizes something new is happening. The lightning touched the shipmast and now it’s being eaten by bright, dancing tongues of red that swallow up the canvas sail and race across the rigging. Crowley has never seen anything like it. 

It must be dangerous, because the sailors decide to brave the sea over that leaping red creature. They lower each other down the sides of the great hull in small wooden crafts that bob madly upon the water. 

Bentley is flapping her wings in distress, shouting and trying to get Crowley’s attention over the storm, but he doesn’t hear her. 

In a manner of minutes, the proud vessel is torn violently apart in a horrible explosion that Crowley can only compare to the singular time Ligur took him to watch a volcano erupt on the seafloor. It’s frightening enough that when Crowley flings himself under the water he gulps with his lungs instead of his gills and spends a frantic moment coughing and hacking before he remembers how to breathe. 

Surfacing warily, heart pounding, Crowley stares at the wreckage where a lovely ship had been. There is thick, acrid, billowing smoke filling the sky like a pillar. There are people shouting and splashing, and an air of general chaos and fear, and then Crowley finally spots Gabriel. 

The man clambers over the side of a boat, helped by strong hands on all sides. He’s coughing up sea water and heaving in painful-sounding breaths. Crowley can’t make out what he says, but he doesn’t need to, because the cry goes up instantly: 

Prince Fell is in the water.

‘Crowley, don’t you dare!’ Bentley squawks. 

Crowley is already throwing himself forward. There are huge pieces of timber that could crush him, and the air is hot in a way he’s never experienced before, and once his tail gets caught in a tangle of blackened rigging, but Crowley presses on. He’s breathing hard and clumsy with panic, searching frantically for any sign of—there!

That beautiful boy who gave away his cloak is slumped over a piece of wood hardly wider across than the length of Crowley’s arm, his face slack and his eyes closed. As Crowley watches, he begins to slip into the maws of the sea. 

“Oh, no you don’t,” Crowley grits out, crossing the distance between them with two powerful pumps of his tail. He wraps an arm around the human’s chest and clutches him close, and then he has to take a moment to breathe and reorient himself until he remembers which way the beach is. 

‘You are so stupid!’ Bentley screeches at him when he finally manages to drag himself and his passenger up onto the sand of a little cove, where they are protected from the worst of the rain by towering cliffs. ‘I can’t stand you! You scared me to death!’

Crowley’s whole body aches as he pushes himself up on his hands. Fell is sprawled on his back in the cool sand, very wet and pale and still. Crowley likes the stillness least of all. Hovering anxiously, he gives the human’s face a gentle pat. Nothing happens, and he turns to the duck in wide-eyed dismay. 

She’s still angry with him, but not enough that she’ll leave him to deal with something horrible by himself. Coming closer, she says, ‘Try it again.’

Crowley steels himself and pats Fell’s chest this time. When even that doesn’t garner a reaction, desperation begins to mount, and Crowley grasps the human’s shoulder and shakes him a little harder than he meant to. 

But it seems to jostle something loose, and suddenly Prince Fell is coughing up water, curling up on his side like a little sea snail and gasping at the air. His eyes don’t fully open, and he doesn’t seem to be entirely aware, but his chest is heaving in such an unmistakable sign of life that Crowley goes nearly boneless with relief. 

It’s foolish to linger, Crowley knows that. Still, he lingers. 

White-gold curls are plastered to the human’s face, and Crowley smooths them away with careful fingers. He should be allowed to have this; this one secret, stolen moment of reassurance with the beautiful life that he saved. 

“Well,” he says hoarsely, “that went down like a lead balloon.”

‘You don’t even know what that means,’ Bentley snaps. 

Crowley would usually be quick to strike up an argument that it’s not really the letter of the thing that matters, it’s the spirit—and how is a duck so sure of what a human phrase means, anyway?

But he doesn’t say anything at all, because Fell’s eyes open, and they’re a blue-green like the color of the sea under the sun, and they’re looking right at Crowley. And for a moment, they just gaze at one another, and they’re so close that it doesn’t seem possible that they could belong to different worlds. 

And then there are distant voices crying out, and the heady crunch of boats beaching upon the rocky shore, and Crowley is startled back into his body. He rips himself away and plunges into the high tide, watching from the shallow water as the prince is rescued by his people. No one comes after Crowley, or even looks his way; it’s pitch black, storm clouds having thrown themselves like a blanket over the moon and stars, so it’s likely they didn’t even see him. His dark scales and hair are a helpful camouflage. 

Bentley is exhausted and fed up with him, but she still invites herself into the crook of Crowley’s arm to be held. He understands completely. He could use some comforting, too. 

“Okay,” he says in a whisper. “Now I’ve pressed my luck.”

It’s a long time before Crowley sees his human again. It’s partly his fault; his brothers don’t know exactly what he got up to that stormy night, but just knowing that he had eluded the guards for as long as he did was reason enough for them to assume he was making some trouble somewhere, and then he’s really grounded. It means whole months of being kept close to the palace and escorted around with an entire entourage and it’s the absolute worst. 

But even when Bee decides he’s suffered enough and he’s free to come and go as he pleases, Prince Fell seems to keep to land. The royal vessel has been replaced, and the new ship sits in place of pride in the harbor, but it has never once taken so much as a jaunt up and down the coastline. After the disastrous end of the party at sea and the near-death experience that followed, Crowley can certainly understand that. 

He’s disappointed, though. He’s disappointed for nearly a full year.

Then the day comes that he hears chatter from his friends among the porpoises that the big ship is on the move again, the one much bigger than the little sailing crafts the sailors cast their nets from, in honor of the human prince’s birthday. 

Crowley’s heart leaps. He dashes right off in the middle of lunch, to a racket of upturned plates and the furious roars of Hastur and Ligur. Crowley squirms his way out a narrow window that his brothers are too bulky to chase him through and shoots through the cool depths into the warmer, sun-filled waters. 

And there it is, as promised. The grand ship is making its way along the coast, banner flags soaring, painted sails standing full and proud. 

It’s dangerous to surface under the noonday sun, but Crowley can’t help it. There’s a reef nearby he can take shelter behind, and he peers around the stone and coral for a fleeting glimpse of the people, searching for that one interesting person in particular.  

A flash of pale hair, and Crowley straightens. Is that him? It’s impossible to be sure from this distance, but Crowley wants so badly for it to be his prince that he decides that it simply must be. There’s some activity aboard, the pale-haired figure seems to be arguing with—sure, Crowley thinks, let’s assume the big boring one is Gabriel. 

There’s some general hand-waving, and some pacing around, and Crowley is curious enough to watch the whole thing from the safe shadow of his reef. He wishes he could see their faces clearly. He wishes he could hear them. He wishes he could be on that ship, sitting on the deck, weighing in on the argument every two seconds so that nobody forgot he was on Fell’s side. 

These wistful thoughts come to a screeching halt when a rough wave rocks the ship just hard enough that Fell loses his balance. Crowley hisses in alarm as the prince is pitched half-over the side, but multiple hands shoot out to catch him from every direction, and he’s hauled safely back aboard. 

“How could anyone be as unlucky as you?” he wonders out loud in disbelief. “That’s twice!”

The prince is peering down at the water, and the ship has drifted close enough that Crowley can hear him making loud, dismayed noises, gesticulating wildly at—oh, he dropped something. From the looks of things, they aren’t stopping for it. The current has carried it too far away already, and by the time they get the ship anchored and send out a boat, it’ll be halfway across the Atlantic.

Crowley already knows what’s going to happen. One glimpse of that round face folded in misery is all it takes for him to eel out of his hiding place and plunge forward into the sea. 

It takes him the better part of an hour and the help of a few bored seals to track down Fell’s lost treasure. The familiar shadow of Bentley falls over him as he hauls it to the shore. She’s judging him silently the entire way, and he feels perfectly justified in ignoring her. 

He winds up, by pure chance or perhaps by subconscious design, at the same little cove as before.

The thing Fell dropped turned out to be a box. It’s a nice box, carved ornately with pretty, whimsical figures and flowers, but what captures Crowley’s attention—and appeals to his damnable curiosity—is that it appears not to have gotten any water inside. It’s hollow, and something thunks around when he gives it a cursory rattle. 

Oh, he has to see.

Diving briefly and coming up with a fist-sized rock in hand, Crowley makes short work of the shiny lock. He figures Fell would be willing to forgive him a quick peek, since he probably isn’t expecting to get the box back in the first place, and throws open the lid with a clear (or, at least, temporarily distracted) conscience. 

Right away, Crowley can guess how the inside remained dry despite its dunk into the ocean. There is a line of caulking along all the edges where the flat boards meet. The whole interior is covered in a fine, glossy layer of something that must act as a webbing of sorts. It’s delightfully impressive, and he spends so long admiring the box that he almost forgets about the things inside it. 

‘You better take it up on the rocks so you don’t get it wet,’ Bentley advises him grudgingly. ‘It would be just like you to undo all your own hard work in a really dumb way.’

Crowley sticks his forked tongue out at her but can’t deny that her logic is sound. 

He scoots awkwardly up onto the beach, tail dragging behind him in a way that promises he’ll have sand stuck in his scales for days, and flaps his hands around in the warm air until they’re uncomfortably dry. Only then does he start poking at the water-proofed treasures, and he realizes he’s seen something like them before. 

These are like the hard bindings he’ll sometimes find on the shelves of those sunken ship cabins, only they’re much different when they’re dry. They’re filled with impossibly thin, brittle leaf-like pages that bear shapes and symbols printed in neat little rows. 

Crowley finds himself flipping through the pages eagerly. He can’t make sense of what must be the human’s written language, but there are illustrations interspersed between some of the symbols, and he’s fascinated by them. It’s no wonder they don’t survive the trip to Crowley’s home, as delicate as they are.

“Can you believe my brothers think humans are boring?” he asks his friend, tilting the pages toward her so she can see. “Look what they’ve done!”

Some gulls passing overhead warn him that a human is approaching. For a prince, Crowley does a lot of undignified scrambling. Beelzebub would be so embarrassed to be related to him if they could see him now, trying to desperately cram the books back into the box with some level of care and delicacy. 

‘Are you trying to be seen? Hurry up!’

Crowley can hear footsteps crunching on the sand, drawing nearer. He finally gets the lid shut, shoves the box a little farther from the lapping edge of the surf, and then turns and dives beneath the water. 

He swims all the way to his rock before he dares to stop and look back. 

“Oh,” Crowley whispers, easing the tiniest bit forward. “It’s my human.”

Fell’s eyes are red-rimmed, and his steps are slow and measured. He seems to be scouring the beach in hopes that maybe his treasure has washed ashore. He is making his way slowly, but deliberately, toward their cove in the manner of someone moving very carefully through a dream to avoid waking themselves up. 

He pauses once, to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. Crowley learns something new about himself in that moment, which is: he cannot stand to watch Fell cry. Crowley and Bentley have a furious, whispered exchange (consisting of “do something!” and ‘what am I supposed to do, I am literally a duck’) that ends with Bentley giving a disgruntled flap of her wings and flying up to the beach. 

She sails right past Fell’s shoulder, startling him, and lands in a clumsy heap of feathers next to the case of books. Fell’s eyes follow her, and then light upon the box. 

Crowley smiles to himself. There’s this sunny sense of pride, or accomplishment, swelling up inside his chest at the way the human’s face initially goes slack with shock, and then crumples in some painful-looking anticipation as he hurries over, and then brightens with pure, unexpected joy to find his books inside, unharmed. 

See? Cheer up, Crowley wishes he could say. Happy birthday.

He has to settle for watching from a distance, hidden mostly under the water and behind the rock, with his long hair gathered in a fist at his side so it doesn’t drift out and give him away. 

Fell kneels there for a long time, as though he can’t quite bring himself to believe this good fortune. He stares at the broken lock, and then out at the sea. Crowley slinks back a little farther, unnerved by the intensity of those eyes. 

He only comes out again when the grinding crunch of footsteps through sand gives away that the human prince is leaving. 

Something glints in the evening sun, left behind where the box had been. Bentley clearly thinks he’s gone mad, but Crowley can’t help himself. He creeps forward to investigate, and finds a golden ring. 

Fell must have left it there intentionally—a gift? A thank you? Some strange human custom of restoring balance to the universe after an unexpected miracle?

When Crowley picks it up, it’s still warm from Fell’s hands. 

Perhaps it isn’t meant for Crowley at all, but it belongs to his human, and he wants it so desperately he can’t imagine just leaving it here. His fingers aren’t suited for jewelry like this but he can put it on a necklace and keep it close to his heart. Maybe he’ll ask Bee for a charm to keep it safe in the water. Since it will be one of the more harmless things he’s ever asked for, he’s almost certain they’ll do it for him, if only in an attempt to keep him out of trouble. 

On his way home, Crowley comes to a decision. It was inevitable, really; one might even call it ineffable. 

Fell obviously needs looking after, and none of the other humans seem to be up to the job. 

That means Crowley will have to do it.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he calls up to Bentley. 

‘I guarantee you I’m not.’

“It’s time to make a deal with a witch,” Crowley declares, and dives under the water, leaving the duck to stare after him in horrified confusion. 

The sea witch lives on the outskirts of town, but only because it’s nearer to the raw materials she needs to collect fresh every day. Her grandmother was a fearsome mermaid, cultivating an air of mystery in just about everything she did and delighting in it, from the strange plants she wore in her hair, to the fossilized skeleton of an ancient sea monster that she lived in. 

Anathema cut at least three-fourths of the dramatics out of the family business when she took over. The new shop is fashioned sensibly out of stone, like most others are, and her long hair is clean and rather beautiful to look at. 

She is helping another customer when Crowley wanders in, so he peruses the shelves while he waits. Not because he has any idea what he’s looking at; more because the neat little bottles and plant cuttings and polished gems are pleasing to the eye. 

“Prince Crowley,” a nervous-looking fellow behind the counter says. “Um. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Oh, don't mind me,” Crowley says, waving a hand. “I’ll wait my turn.” 

The customer seems a little self-conscious to be taking up a royal’s time, but once Crowley pretends to be engrossed in a collection of painted scallop shells, she stops side-eyeing him and pays for her bottle-of-whatever and leaves.

Anathema closes the door behind her and turns to give Crowley a once-over. 

“I take it you’re not here for a performance enhancement potion,” she says by way of hello.

“No,” Crowley says. Then, “A what?”

“Nevermind. This will probably be way more interesting than anything else I’ve done today. Newt, can you watch the front?”

The nervous one is quick to agree. Anathema gestures for Crowley to follow her around the counter and into the next room. There’s a work table and a few comfortable places to sit, and some growing things that lean toward Crowley when he comes in. 

“Oh,” he says, inspecting them. “I’ve never seen Palmaria palmata in this color before. Not very well-behaved, are they?”

He can’t really fault the plants for being curious without being an entire hypocrite, so he gives their translucent, feathered edges a gentle touch that takes any sting out of his remark. 

Anathema looks at him as though he’s speaking another language for a moment, looks at her plants, and then visibly decides not to go there. She says, “Please sit,” and offers him some taffy in the name of being a good host, and then finally they can get down to business. 

Crowley says, “I need a thing.”

She nods solemnly. “Most people who show up here need a thing. But most people who show up here aren’t the Their Majesty's baby brother. I’m sure you know that King Beelzebub has more power than I do, so why come to me?”

This is the part of the conversation Crowley is worried about. If word of this gets back to his family, he won’t be allowed out of the palace again until he’s a hundred. Still, he affects an attitude of nonchalance and pretends like his heart is beating at the usual speed and not about to leap right out of his chest with nerves. 

“I thought discretion was a part of the package,” he says pointedly. 

“Oh, sure it is,” Anathema retorts. “But you’re the prince, and you could destroy my family business in two minutes if you chicken out or change your mind, so I’m left to decide if it’s worth taking a chance on you or if I’m better off hedging my bets and calling a guard.”

Dropping all pretenses, Crowley leans forward hastily. “Please don’t call a guard. I’ll sign any contract you want. I’ll—I’ll bring you stones, for your work. What do you like? Clear quartz? Moonstone? Name it, it’s yours.”

Something in her guarded, unyielding expression has thawed. She studies him for a moment—studies the space around him for a longer moment, as if there’s some kind of secret message floating around his head—and then nods, having come to a decision. 

“Tell me what you’re after,” Anathema says. 

Crowley tells her. 

Anathema is quiet while he talks, but Crowley has her attention. She absorbs his story about the ship in the storm without blinking, even when he haltingly describes the frightening explosion and the even more frightening deadweight of the pretty human as Crowley hauled him to safety, the sweet rush of relief when he started breathing again, the moment their eyes met. Crowley explains what happened just the other day, when he rescued the books. He pulls his necklace forward to show her the glint of the precious ring that Bee had charmed for him, after all. 

He wants to be a human. He wants the legs and the proper lungs and eyes that won’t glow in the dark. He wants, more than he’s ever wanted anything, to walk across that shore and meet Fell properly. He wants to be that person’s friend. 

“Say I do this for you,” she says when he’s finished. “You’d really be okay with it? Never seeing your family again?”

“Do they forget how to swim in this scenario?” Crowley asks dryly. “What’s stopping them from coming up to see me?”

Anathema smiles for the first time. “That’s fair. And you’re willing to pay a hefty price? I can’t imagine this will come cheap. It might cost you something you’ll not want to part with. Like a sense, or a limb.”

Crowley knows how magic works. It was impossible to escape those lessons growing up, given who his eldest sibling is. Every time he asked for an easy solution to any number of childish problems, one of his brothers pulled him aside and gave him the Lecture about equivalent exchange, the Rule of Three, and personal responsibility. He learned pretty early on to spare himself the sermon and get results on his own, for better or worse.

When it comes to making a decision both well-informed and wildly reckless, Crowley is something of a professional. 

“I know the risks I’m taking,” he assures the sea witch. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

“All of this for a stranger,” Anathema muses. “I can’t decide if it’s more sweet or foolish.”

“If you’d seen him, you’d understand,” Crowley says with certainty. There’s no one who could know Fell and not like him, and his kindness, and his sincerity, and his sea-glass eyes. Not to say that Crowley really knows him, but… something has to be said for intuition, right? 

They hash out the details and discuss the payment. It’s not an exact science, Anathema warns him, and it’s something she’s never done before, so there’s likely going to be a bit of trial and error involved. The fact that it’s even possible is enough to make Crowley buoyant with optimism. 

Honestly, Crowley finds himself enjoying her company. He’s never had reason to seek out her services before, but he wishes he had. Even Newt is pleasant enough to talk to, when he stops acting as though Crowley is going to turn him to stone with his eyes at any moment, and the three of them pass a whole afternoon engrossed in theoretical conversation about crystal magic and manifestation and how in the hell they’re going to turn a fishtail into a pair of legs. 

Before he leaves, Crowley signs the contract. He’s happy to do it, and relieved to feel the magic bind him and the witch to their agreement. There’s an All Sales Final proviso in there that protects Anathema in case of any unfortunate outcome, and a confidentiality agreement that will keep their deal a secret from anyone on the outside—even Bee.

“Come back tomorrow,” Anathema says. Her eyes are very bright at the prospect of working such a challenging spell. She looks as eager about the whole thing as Crowley feels, now that they’ve made it official. “Think about what you’re going to pay.”

Evening darkness has fallen by the time he begins to make his way home. The streets of Atlantica are lined with luminescent stones, but this far from the kingdom proper Crowley only has his own night-eyes to see by. He probably should have brought a lamp, or borrowed one from Anathema, but the palace isn’t so far away that he’s worried about making the trip without one.

And it isn’t as though there’s not lovely things to look at along the way. The bottom of the sea is black as pitch, but that makes the little spots of color and light all the more beautiful for the contrast. Bioluminescent fish that dart around his face, and sea anemones that lift their arms to meet him as he swims by, and algae stirred into a dazzling blue glow in his wake. 

Crowley has a one-track mind when it suits him, and is easily distracted at all other times. He’s stopped and introducing himself to a bloom of curious jellyfish when the tentacles start to creep in. He doesn’t even notice them until the anemones snap closed and the little fish all bolt away, and by then he’s surrounded. 

The vague silhouette of what might have been a mountain or a sea volcano shifts a bit, moving closer. Two massive, pillar-like feeding tentacles have formed a circle around Crowley, pulling him in. 

“A wayward prince,” a titanic voice says from what seems like every direction. If it wasn’t even the slightest bit familiar, Crowley probably would have fainted out of sheer terror. “What are you doing all the way out here by yourself, darling?”

“I was visiting a friend, Uncle Luci,” he calls back. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize, little one. I’ve been awake for the last eighteen years. I’ve been watching.”

Crowley isn’t afraid of his uncle, not really, but he’s certainly wary of him. He’s never been alone with Lucifer before. The handful of times he’s met with the Kraken, all three of his brothers were present and watchful, and Crowley always assumed it was because he was a bit on the runty side growing up and no one wanted him to accidentally get squashed during a family reunion. 

Now he’s on his own, and there is a little thread of animal fear squirming around in the back of his brain. He has to fight his body’s instinct to flee. 

“And I know what you’ve been up to,” Lucifer goes on mildly. 

Crowley’s heart stops cold. This is at least one million times worse than Bee, Hastur and Ligur finding out. He’s scrambling to come up with an excuse, a plea, a bargain, anything, when his uncle surprises him.

“You’re certainly more ambitious than your siblings are. I respect that.”

“You… you do?” Crowley says uncertainly. His voice is so quiet it’s a wonder Lucifer hears him at all. “Really?”

“Of course, darling. It’s only natural to want for more than what you have.”

Relief gusts through Crowley’s chest and leaves him staggered. He braces his hands on the nearest tentacle. “Thank you for understanding, Uncle Luci. You won’t tell Bee, will you?”

“No, this is best left between us. Beelzebub may be happy with their rule of the sea alone, but once we conquer the land, they’ll see how shortsighted they’ve been.”

Crowley blinks, and pulls his hands away. “Conquer?”

“I admit, I’ve never thought of doing it your way. Ensnaring a prince to take control of his kingdom—it’s a stroke of pure genius, darling. I had my doubts about letting those fools raise you, but you’ve grown into a splendid young merman.”

Crowley twitches at the designation, because it’s the only spare faculty he has to spare at the moment. The rest of his mind and body are spiraling into a pit of dread and confusion. Ensnaring the prince? Taking control of the kingdom? That’s not even close to what Crowley’s planning. Lucifer said he’d been watching, how the hell had he seen any of that?

“Um,” Crowley ventures, heart pounding. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” 

The Kraken’s gaze slams back onto Crowley with crushing impact. “Oh?”

It’s the most dangerous ‘oh’ Crowley has ever heard, and that’s including the time Ligur found out that Crowley repurposed his best scrying mirror into a suncatcher. Self-preservation rears its head and Crowley babbles, “I just mean, I mostly raised myself, is all. My brothers didn’t have much to do with it.”

Which is a lie, but hopefully the sort of thing his uncle might like to hear. The next two seconds feel like an eternity, and then Lucifer laughs, a whole full-throated, bellowing thing that seems to shake the sea floor. 

“Clever Crowley. I have a gift for you, to help your plan go smoothly. Humans tend to muddle things up, and I would hate to see you disappointed.”

The ancient squid’s eyes begin to glow, a raw spark of the arcane magic that generations of kings have spent their whole lifetimes refining. Crowley has no time to react before he feels it settle on him, a powerful binding far more sinister than the consensual agreement he entered into with Anathema. 

It sits heavy in his chest and his throat, as though it might cause Crowley to choke if he makes the wrong move. He cups his hands around the column of his neck, feeling very small, and very scared, and very much out of his depth. 

“What is it?” he whispers. 

“A curse, and a compulsion. The very first word you say once you've walked upon the land will be the spell of destruction. It will find its target no matter where you are.” 

Those huge tentacles loosen from the tight circle they have him in, but Crowley is frozen right where he is. The sharp tips of his fingers dig into his throat where his hands are still wrapped around his neck. He feels light-headed. 

“Shall I turn you human now?” Uncle Lucifer offers generously. 

“No!” Crowley shouts. “I mean—I just signed a contract with the witch. I can’t break it, Uncle Luci.” 

“Of course you can’t, darling,” the Kraken sighs. “If only I’d gotten to you sooner.”

The jellyfish haven’t left Crowley; most of the bloom is still behind him, glowing gently and pulsing back and forth with all the urgency of drifting flower petals. One of them touches Crowley’s arm with a stinging tentacle too delicate to do him any harm. 

Uncle Lucifer shifts as though he might bat it away with enough force to crush it. Crowley cups the fragile creature between his hands and presses it close. He begins to withdraw, slowly enough that the jellies around him get the idea and start their own retreat. He is trembling from head to fin, nearly blind with terror, but he doesn’t think his uncle can tell. 

“I have to go,” Crowley says. 

“Very well. When is the witch going to grant your wish?”

His voice is hoarse, but it doesn’t waver. “Tomorrow.”

Pleased, the Kraken finally releases him, the dark bulk of its gargantuan body disappearing into the rest of the night ocean seamlessly. 

“Good luck, Crowley,” Lucifer says in parting. “I will be watching.”

Crowley travels home in a daze. His tail is working on autopilot every breath of the way. Most of the jellyfish peel away when he finally reaches the city, save for the one he’s still clutching against his chest. It doesn’t seem to mind. 

He swims up to the palace, past the guards, and through every room he usually spends his free time in, until he comes to Bee’s study. They’re inside with Dagon, and the two of them are probably discussing something boring, like a budget or a trade route, but he doesn’t hear a word of it. 

Bee stares down at him in surprise when he tucks himself onto the bench seat beside them and puts his head in their lap, but he isn’t sent away. He never is, unless he’s being annoying on purpose. He is young enough still that he can get away with this, something he finds himself wishing that he had taken advantage of more often. 

A hand settles in his hair, so comforting after his frightening encounter with Lucifer that it puts a lump in Crowley’s throat.

“Stop bringing rodents into the castle,” Beelzebub says at length. 

The jellyfish, impervious to the gibe, floats peacefully above Crowley’s heart. The conversation between King and adviser resumes again, a little softer than before in case the prince falls asleep. Crowley could chime in if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He lays there quietly instead. 

He’s practicing. He knows exactly what he’s going to offer Anathema as payment tomorrow. 

“Your voice?” Anathema demands, somehow looking both furious and deeply concerned. “That’s the best you could come up with?”

Crowley nods tightly. He’s not budging on this. He doesn’t think it’s safe to confide in his new friend about everything his uncle is planning—in part because the existence of the Kraken is a state secret, and also because the magic lingering in his throat has effectively made him terrified of saying very much of anything to anyone. 

Anathema stares hard at him. Her eyes do that thing again where they rove around his face, seemingly reading into something only she can see. She glances over her shoulder at Newt, who shrugs. 

“If you’re sure,” the witch says reluctantly, “absolutely sure, then we can proceed.”

The workshop is part of the reason why her shop sits where it does. There’s a hydrothermal vent in the floor, heated by nearby volcanic activity. A huge cauldron sits on top of it, bubbling wildly in a pocket of compressed air that keeps additional moisture out. 

All of it is very impressive, and ordinarily Crowley would have a hundred separate questions about all of it, but he takes the ladle she passes him without comment. His hand is shaking, and Anathema holds it between both of hers for a moment. 

“It won’t hurt,” she says urgently. “You’ll swallow this drink down, and cough it back up along with the payment. It will be unpleasant, but it won’t take longer than a few seconds.”

Crowley nods, and touches the rim of the ladle to his lips, and knocks the whole thing down in a single gulp that seems to take Anathema by surprise. The spell squirms to life inside him. Right away his body fights to reject it, and it sticks and crawls and burns its way deeper and deeper and deeper until it wrenches something loose, and then suddenly there is no more resistance and Crowley is doubled over to vomit the magic back up into the round glass flask that Newt hastily supplies him. Newt corks it swiftly, and passes it to Anathema, and then stays close, rubbing Crowley’s back and uttering nonsense to him.

“Oh,” Anathema says in an awed voice. “It matches the color of your aura almost perfectly.”

He looks up to find the glass in her hands full of something like starlight. It shimmers and dances mischievously in its little cage, the thing that always asked too many questions and wondered too many things and got Crowley into trouble every single day. His voice. 

Crowley opens his mouth to speak and no sound comes out. Urgently, he tries again, tries to say anything, and can’t utter a single syllable. He buries his face in his hands, shaking with relief. 

Fell will be safe. 

“Here,” Anathema says in a tone more gentle than any she’s used with him so far. Crowley looks up in time to watch a piece of the taffy from her shop get folded into his hands. “I figured at least one part of this ordeal ought to be painless. This candy will make you human.”

He holds it up to the light, and the witch goes on, “Do not eat it down here. You’ll drown.” 

Newt loops the strap of a satchel over Crowley’s head and shoulder. “These are some clothes that should probably fit when you change,” he says. “You know, you can find human stuff all over the place if you look for it.”

Crowley nods, and now that the worst is well behind them, rosy hope is making a home for itself in his heart again. He smiles brightly, and hopes his friends hear it for the thank you it is. 

Despite herself, Anathema smiles back. 

“Good luck,” she says. It sounds much different coming from her than it did from Uncle Luci. 

The swim up to the surface feels different somehow, for all that he’s done it a million times before. The sky is overcast, and the water is cool and comfortable, and Crowley has barely thrown his head and shoulders out of the sea before he’s popping the taffy into his mouth. 

He waits to feel some kind of change. As he’s waiting, the saltwater begins to sting his eyes. The breaths he takes with his lungs gets deeper and fuller. It’s difficult to stay afloat, his arms working much harder than he’s used to, and that’s about when he realizes his powerful tail is gone. 

Crowley gasps, and promptly slips under the water, and resurfaces again with a sputter. It takes real effort getting himself to the beach, his new limbs haphazard and unhelpful. He’s wheezing when he finally slumps across the shore, exhausted but also exhilarated. 

Rolling over onto his back, he lifts one of his legs up and wiggles the toes. He would laugh out loud if he could, but he settles for a grin so wide it hurts his face. 

‘Oh, no,’ the familiar voice of Bentley says from somewhere behind his head. Crowley tilts his head back to look at the sea duck upside down. She looks dismayed by his whole person in general. ‘I can’t believe you. I thought you were kidding.’

Crowley sits up, shoving wet hanks of his hair out of the way. The strap of the satchel Newt gave him catches around his neck and he remembers the clothes inside with a start. Oh, that’s right. He’s sitting naked on the beach, and he can guess that humans would frown on that sort of thing, considering they’re always going around all covered up. 

Bentley huffs when she loses his attention and flaps around to the front of him while he wrestles the canvas bag open. 

‘Oh,’ she says abruptly. ‘Your eyes are different.’ 

Crowley jerks his head up, surprised. He starts to ask what she means by that and only silence comes out. With a grimace, he pats his throat. Bentley straightens in alarm. 

‘You can’t talk? Crowley? Why can’t you talk?’

He shrugs. There’s absolutely no way he can possibly explain everything that had happened in the time since he spoke to Bentley yesterday. Her feathers will be ruffled for awhile, but she’ll get over it. She’s always telling him to shut up anyway—hell, everyone is. 

Laying out the wet clothes like pieces of a puzzle, Crowley makes quick work of dressing himself for the first time. It isn’t hard to figure out which pieces are supposed to cover which parts. He does get thrown off by the buttons, but Bentley recovers enough to help him at that point. 

Hopefully these are easier to get on when they’re dry, Crowley thinks, struggling into the trousers. Otherwise why do they even bother?

‘Crowley, someone’s coming,’ Bentley says fretfully. ‘Are you ready? Are you going to be okay?’

He nods, and touches her little head with the tip of one newly unclawed finger. He’ll be okay. She ruffles her wings in distress for a moment, and finally flutters off just as a few human voices come into earshot from around the bend of the beach. 

Heart racing, Crowley pats himself down. He’s fully human, he’s dressed the way humans dress, everything seems to be in place—then his fingers bump Fell’s ring, hanging around his neck on a braided cord, and he tucks it beneath his shirt with barely a second to spare.

“Oh, my God,” an unfamiliar voice cries out, pitched high and loud in alarm. “There’s someone down by the water!”

Crowley twists around to look up at the people hurrying towards him. One of them is a lady he has never seen before, lurching as though she might lose her balance on the loose rocks.

The other is Fell. He rushes to Crowley’s side like a force of nature, as sure-footed on land as he definitely isn’t at sea, and Crowley only has eyes for him.  

Fell kneels, right there in the surf and the sand, and asks, “Are you alright?”

Crowley blinks, spellbound by the undivided attention of Fell’s beautiful eyes, and only remembers to nod after enough time has passed that both the humans have begun frowning worriedly at him. Fell shrugs off the outer jacket he’s wearing and wraps it around Crowley’s shoulders decisively. 

“Must have been caught in those whirlpools the fishermen warned us about,” the lady says sympathetically. She glances down the stretch of the coast. “Nothing left of the boat. It’s a miracle he made it as far as he did, the poor thing.”

“Tracy, would you make your way back up to the castle, please?” Fell says. “I’d appreciate it if you could summon the physician, and ask the maids to start a hot bath.”

“Of course, dearie.” 

She gives Crowley a pleasant smile before she makes her way back in the direction they both came from, tottering precariously until she gets up to the harder earth. Crowley doesn’t even spare her a glance, because Fell has begun rubbing at Crowley’s arms through the dry material of the jacket, and it’s overwhelmingly distracting. 

Fell says, to Crowley this time, “Let’s get you off the ground now, shall we?”

This is easier said than done. Aside from his clumsy splashing onto the beach, and his undignified rolling around to get dressed, Crowley’s legs are positively untried. They fold beneath him the moment he gets upright, but Fell swiftly intervenes. With an arm around Crowley’s shoulders and one beneath his knees, he hoists the former merperson up as though Crowley weighs as much as a couple of sea grapes. 

Crowley gasps, scrabbling for a handful of Fell's shirt. He's never in his life been borne up into the air like this. 

“Hush, my dear,” Fell says gently. His voice rumbles through his chest, and pressed this close Crowley can feel it. “You’re safe now. I won’t let you fall.”

And true to his word, he carries Crowley every step of the way, farther up the coast than Crowley has ever gone, past a little city of moored fishing boats and a crowd of surprised faces that quickly morph into concerned ones. 

Fell placates them all easily, without ever breaking stride. His clothes are surely damp from Crowley’s soaked ensemble, and Crowley’s long hair where it clings and curls around his arm probably feels about as pleasant to the touch as a bunch of knotted seaweed, but every time he looks down to check on his passenger, he favors Crowley with a kind smile. 

This was, hands down, Crowley thinks dazedly, the best idea I’ve ever had. 

Fell’s castle is a beautiful structure of whitewashed stone, built on the edge of a rocky inlet, with huge ocean-facing windows and steps that lead right down the facade and into the sea. The outer bailey is all water, and there’s a dock for where the grand ship must sleep when it’s not racing around the island. 

They cross a covered stone bridge into a bustling little courtyard, and they are immediately surrounded by people who must be the palace staff. A lot of frantic questions are asked—there’s always been an air of general chaos that follows Crowley wherever he goes, it’s good to see that that hasn’t changed—and Crowley and Fell are both swept up some stairs, into a grand hall, up some more impressive stairs this time, to eventually wind up in a bright, airy bedchamber. 

A man is waiting there for them, dressed smartly and with a business-like bag in hand. Fell lowers Crowley carefully to his feet, waits until Crowley manages to find his balance, and then guides him to a chair. 

“Wait here for just a moment,” Fell says, and crosses to the other side of the room to have a conversation in low undertones with the person who must be the court physician. 

Crowley gazes around the room in unabashed curiosity. It’s not so different from his room in Atlantica—he recognizes the vanity for what it is, and the bed, and of course the windows and the shelves. It’s just that the quality of light makes everything shine like polished amber. The surfaces gleam, and there is no floating detriment in the air, no rough surfaces to contend with. Even the chair he’s sitting on is cushioned and soft. 

“—dear?”

With a jolt, Crowley realizes Fell has been speaking to him. The human prince smiles and repeats himself. 

“Are you ready for the doctor now, dear?”

Crowley nods, and he’s prepared for it this time when Fell offers his hands. Together they get him upright and the doctor moves in. He runs efficient hands across Crowley’s neck and down his spine, bends his joints to check for pain, prods carefully at his scalp through his tangled mane of hair to check for bumps, those fragile mammal places where a hard landing might mean the end of one’s life. 

While he works, the doctor asks questions that Crowley can answer with a nod, a shake of his head, or a shrug: Does anything hurt? Do you remember hitting your head? Are you experiencing any dizziness or nausea? Can you breathe without pain? Can you speak?

It doesn’t take very long, and both the doctor and the prince seem relieved to find that Crowley is apparently no worse for wear after what they assume was a harrowing episode at sea. Crowley is still a little wobbly on his feet, but Fell is a solid support by his side, and this time Crowley is led to a little ensuite right off the room they were just in. 

It’s all marble and gleaming tile and floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a round, raised pool of water in the middle of the room, steaming and fragrant. The woman from the beach is there, bustling about with clean linens, and she brightens when she sees Fell and Crowley at the door. 

“Never a dull moment around here, is there, your highness?” she says cheerfully. “You can leave him with me, I’ll get him sorted.”

Fell guides Crowley to a small bench by the pool and helps him sit. When he leans back, Crowley sees for the first time what a mess he’s made of poor Fell. His clothes are wet and dirty, smeared with sand and algae and god knows what else, and even his hair is in disarray where it isn’t sticking to his forehead. 

Sorry, Crowley wants to tell him. Somehow, his eyes alone must get the point across. 

“Clothes are hardly as important as another person’s well-being,” Fell says firmly. “I refuse to hear anymore about it. Now,” he goes on, his voice easing back into the gentle tone Crowley is quickly becoming familiar with, “when you’re washed up and dressed, I’d like you to join me for dinner.”

“Such a kind soul, our Prince Fell,” Tracy says when Fell has left the room. She sighs gustily, as though she’s so full of fondness she doesn’t know where to put it all. Crowley decides he likes her. “Alright, you. Into the bath now. If you’re attached to these things you’re wearing, I’ll have them laundered for you, otherwise we’ll get you something new.”

Peeling himself out of the wet clothes is remarkably satisfying, even if it does leave him shivering a little. All he’s left with is Fell’s ring, swinging lightly against his breastbone. Tracy helps him over to the raised pool—the bath. Crowley sits on the edge and swings his feet over, and gives a little gasp. 

It’s warm. The prickling heat is such a disarmingly pleasant sensation that he sinks the rest of the way inside with aplomb, until the water laps up by his ears. 

Tracy laughs at him, and there’s no cruelty in the sound. Her face seems to be built for these expressions of joy. 

“You little darling,” she says cheerfully. “I have the feeling you’re going to love the bubbles.”

She’s absolutely right. As he washes, with a square of fabric and a waxy bar of something called soap, the surface of the water forms a layer of fluffy white foam. It’s weightless and the closest thing to a cloud Crowley is likely to ever touch, and he’s immediately distracted by it. 

“You look about the prince’s age, you know, and he’s barely eighteen,” Tracy says, almost to herself, as she pours something from a large bottle over Crowley’s tangled head. It doesn’t quite get in his eyes but it still causes him to sputter a bit. “I just imagine him going through something like this again, and—oh, I couldn’t bear it.”

Crowley wishes he could assure her that nothing happened to him that he didn’t want. This whole fabricated scenario seems to be working in his favor, smoothing his way into Fell’s life without suspicion, but he hates to be the reason this bright lady is so full of aching sadness. 

He takes a quick peek at her through the foam. When she notices him looking, she breaks into another smile.

“But what am I on about, hm? His highness is perfectly safe, and so are you,” she says with what must be her usual good cheer. “And you and I are going to get this hair of yours figured out if it’s the last thing we do. It’s going to be absolutely stunning, dearie, just you wait and see.”

Toweling himself dry is a novel experience, but not unpleasant, and getting dressed in a clean pair of trousers and a drawstring shirt is a much easier venture than it was on the beach. Tracy keeps his hair wrapped up in a second towel to keep it from dripping and then sits him down in front of the vanity with an intimidating array of brushes and combs. 

Crowley is arrested by his reflection in the mirror at first. He sees now what Bentley meant when she said his eyes were different. Before they were yellow from side to side, and the pupils were slit; now they’re as human as the rest of him, a bright amber. He blinks rapidly. They’ll take some getting used to.

Tracy chats while she works, and Crowley watches his hair transform under her ministrations. He has never seen it dry before; the color of it in the evening light is almost magical. He touches it, and it’s still damp but slightly springy and a brilliant, burning red that promises to get even lighter as it gets dryer. 

He turns around to look up at Tracy, eyes wide and awed. 

She turns him back around by the shoulders, beaming at his reflection in the mirror. 

“You’re very welcome, love,” she says, as if she’d heard everything he meant to say. 

In the dining hall, Fell is seated alone at the head of a long table. He looks up as Tracy leads Crowley inside, and something wondering takes over his expression. It’s there for a brief moment and then gone again, buried beneath that pleasant smile. Crowley knows he saw it, even if he has no idea what it was. 

“Are you feeling better?” Fell asks. Crowley nods. 

I missed you, he wishes he could say. For the last hour, and the last year. 

All he can do is offer a smile instead, hurrying to take the chair that Fell pulls out for him. 

“Are you joining us, Tracy?” Fell asks. For all that they’re the same age, he’s much more mannered than Crowley’s ever been. More dignified, too. Crowley tries to imagine the palace staff back home giving him even a quarter of the respect Fell's people have for him.  

Nah. No way. The guards in particular would sooner stage a coup.

“Afraid not, my dears,” Tracy says. “Much too much to do. We’ve let things slide a bit with your birthday celebrations taking precedent,” she says, with a playful tug of Fell’s ear, “but now it’s back to business.”

“I’d like to remind you that it was my idea to have a quiet night in for my birthday,” Fell says in the tone of someone who knows it’s a hopeless cause. 

Sure enough, Tracy says, “Yes, well, they can’t all be winners. Enjoy your dinner, boys.”

When she’s gone, and Fell is seated, Crowley tips his head toward the door Tracy disappeared out of. Fell studies him for a moment and then seems to parse his unasked question. 

“Oh, Madame Tracy? She’s my steward. She’s in charge of the entire palace staff, and I’m quite certain the whole kingdom would fall apart without her.” After a moment, he adds, “She also raised me, almost single-handedly, ever since my mother died.”

Crowley is struck by the pain in his voice, and leans forward across the table to seize his hand. Fell looks surprised by him, and then touched. 

“It’s alright. It was more than ten years ago now. A storm took her ship while she was at sea. And I’m quite lucky to have had people in my life who stepped in to take care of me once she was gone.”

It makes a whole damn lot of sense why you don't want to go out on the water, Crowley thinks furiously, trying to say it with his glare. And the next time Gabriel tries to bully you onto a boat, you have to tell him to get fucked, because I can’t. 

Fell’s expression only gets lighter. He turns his hand around in Crowley’s grip so that they’re clasped comfortably. 

“It’s amazing how expressive you are,” he says. “It’s like I can see exactly what you’re thinking.”

A woman comes out into the dining hall pushing a wheeled cart of what must be the food. It brings along an unfamiliar aroma, something pungent but not unpleasant. Dishes are placed in front of their seats, and Crowley lets go of Fell’s hand to lift the cover off his plate.

He eyes the colorful sides and a large cut of something white and flaky with deep suspicion, and looks sidelong at Fell. 

Amused, Fell says, “Given where we are, it’s no surprise that our main import is fish. We rarely go through the trouble of buying game. You might be as sick of it as I am, but the cooks do a lovely job with cod, I promise.”

It’s fish? It's certainly not like any fish I've ever seen, and I'm rather familiar.

Still, Crowley mimics Fell in picking up the little silver instrument by his plate and uses the skinny tines on the business end to dig into the white, flaky fish. Using the instrument as a vehicle to get the fish in his mouth takes three tries, gravity doing its best to spite him.

When he finally gets it there, he nearly chokes. 

“See? I told you,” Fell says, looking pleased as Crowley proceeds to eat as much of the cod as fast as he can. “Have as much as you like.”

He discovers tomatoes and leafy greens and cubed potatoes covered in something called butter, and each bite tastes better than the one before. He doesn’t contribute much in the way of conversation, but Fell provides enough for both of them, and seems honestly delighted to have Crowley’s company at the table. 

In some syrupy, drugging combination of the excitement of a human body, the warm bubble bath, the hair grooming, and the big meal at the end of it all, Crowley can barely keep his eyes open when the dishes are cleared away. 

“Up we go,” says Fell’s voice in his ear, and Crowley would oblige that voice anything, so he goes to the trouble of extracting himself from his comfortable chair. 

His legs are not quite as shaky as they were when they were brand new, but Fell puts a bracing arm around him just in case, and Crowley is happy to lean into it as long as it’s there. It's all rather wonderful, right up until they get to the staircase.

Crowley groans soundlessly. Stairs might be the worst thing humans have ever done. 

“I know,” Fell says ruefully. “Tracy wanted us to eat on the ground floor tonight, mainly to impress, but there’s a lovely chamber on the second floor we can take our supper in tomorrow.” And then, a little too quickly, “Only if you’re staying that long, of course.”

Crowley squeezes his hand. He isn’t going anywhere until Fell shoves him out the door himself. 

Fell beams at him, and they make it to the top of the stairs without incident. Considering their combined track record, Crowley thinks that’s something of an accomplishment. 

That first room he was taken to, with the vanity and the ensuite, is the one Fell returns him to now. He shows Crowley the clothes that were moved into the wardrobe for him, and explains how to ring the bell for help if he wants for anything at all, and then bids him a rather shy goodnight.

Crowley is too sleepy to spin around in circles and he can’t scream with joy for obvious reasons, so he just stands there and allows himself a moment to smile like an absolute idiot.

The sunset over the sea catches his eye, and he wanders toward the wall of windows. Two of them have handles at waist height, and when Crowley turns the handles and gives them a push, he realizes he’s found a pair of doors that let out to a small balcony. 

A lively cluster of flowers turn their faces toward him, curious as anything at this strange newcomer, and he kneels down to let them meet him properly. 

Furious wingbeats and a clumsy landing on the wicker chair by the doors can only mean Bentley has finally found him. 

Disentangling himself from the flowers, Crowley picks her up and buries his face in her warm, oily feathers. She clips his ear with her beak affectionately. Neither of them have to say anything to understand one another. 

When Crowley climbs onto the bed, and sinks into its surprising softness, Bentley settles next to his head on the pillow and doesn’t leave his side all through the night. 

Crowley goes wandering the castle early the next morning, looking for his prince. There’s nearly as many rooms and hallways as in his palace back home, so it doesn’t necessarily overwhelm him, but he still gets lost in a matter of a few careless turns. 

He’s standing in an unfamiliar hallway, plotting his next move, when salvation comes in the form of Tracy. 

“There you are!” she says by way of hello, and laughs when Crowley crosses the hall to her at a run. “Serves you right for wandering off before I could collect you for breakfast,” she goes on without heat, and takes him by the arm. Instead of leading him down the grand staircase and back into the formal dining hall, she pushes open a heavy wooden door and ushers him into a private study. 

Fell is sitting in a wingback chair, sipping something out of a steaming cup, and he looks up when the door opens. 

“Good morning,” he says, and pauses, seeming to take Crowley in for a moment. Then he smiles warmly. “Come in, dear. I saved some breakfast for you. Hot cakes and fried potatoes.” 

He gestures to the chair across the table from his own, and Crowley goes eagerly. The food is still warm, and he brushes his hair back over his shoulder so it doesn’t fall into the plate.

Clean and dry, his hair is ridiculously soft, and curly, and a deep, coral red. Fell seems to get stuck staring at it for a moment before he blinks and clears his throat.

“I like what you’re wearing,” Fell says. “I’m not sure how a dress got into the clothes we gathered for you, but it’s a lucky thing one did. You look wonderful.”

Crowley beams at him, pleased with the compliment. The garment he’s wearing is sky blue and made of a finer material than the shirt and trousers had been. It cinches at his waist and hangs free around his legs, which means he would be able to wear it even if he still had his tail, and something about that appeals to him. 

“Do you prefer dresses over trousers?” Fell asks mildly. 

Crowley tilts his head back and forth thoughtfully, then shrugs. He can’t say he prefers one more than the other. In fact—he points at what Fell is wearing, a long-sleeve shirt and a neat waistcoat, and gives him a thumbs up.

You look good, too.  

It startles Fell into laughter, a bright, full sound that seems to fill the room. He wears joy so well. He’s so beautiful it’s absurd.

“Well, thank you, my dear,” Fell says. His round cheeks are pink. “It seems we’re both looking our best this morning.”

Fell asks if he wants to go into town, to see the market or the marina, but Crowley shakes his head. He remembers what Tracy said the night before. There’s work that needs doing. Fell has a responsibility to his kingdom, and unlike Crowley, he doesn’t have a gaggle of older siblings to handle the hard work for him. Crowley is here to absorb as much of Fell’s company as he’s able, not to be a bigger disruption than he already is by nature. 

Crowley has no idea how to communicate this. He makes a flapping gesture with his hands. Go on, he means to say. Do whatever you need to do. 

Fell blinks, taken aback, but Crowley stands his ground. Tracy appears next to Crowley’s chair and helpfully reminds Fell that he’s running late for a council meeting. She wraps her arm around Crowley’s shoulders and hugs him against her side.

“Don’t you worry about Red,” Tracy says. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

So Fell reluctantly goes to work, and Crowley spends the day following Tracy around instead. He’s intensely curious about everything she does, even the things she must consider to be part of a mundane daily routine. The woman is constantly on the move, directing the palace staff and politely handling townsfolk that come to the castle with minor issues that need to be resolved and answering all of Crowley’s unasked questions about paintings and suits of armor and the strange horned creatures he glimpsed in the courtyard (goats).

By the end of the evening, he’s found a home in the kitchen, parked at a scarred worktable and doing exactly as he’s told with whatever ingredients get sent his way. Crowley is fascinated by the means of using heat to prepare food, and the cooks seem charmed by his rapt attention. 

Fell finds him in the middle of an important lesson about yeast. 

“Oh, dear,” Fell says, grinning. “I hate to interrupt, but would it be okay if I borrowed our guest?”

The head cook, a willowy woman named Eva, waves them away. “Oh, go on then. But if you don’t bring him back tomorrow, I’ll come find him myself.”

Crowley wonders if that’s a threat. When he waves a tentative goodbye at the room at large, he gets a chorus of friendly farewells in return. 

“Very wise of you,” Fell says with good humor, “winning over the kitchens first.” 

Not everyone is to be won over, though. They make it as far as the courtyard before they run into trouble, in the form of Gabriel. It’s Crowley’s first official meeting with him, but he’s already terribly biased, and he can feel his eyes narrowing.

Fell sighs and asks Crowley to wait a moment, and moves ahead to deal with Gabriel on his own. Fell never raises his voice, but Gabriel certainly does, and he shouts things about beggars and charity and getting robbed blind in the night. A laundress nearby abruptly puts down her work and strides over to take Crowley by the arm, steering him away from the ugly scene to meet the goats instead.

“You just wait here with these fellas until the coast is clear,” she advises him. “They’re better company than old Gabe anyway. Better conversationalists, too.” 

Agreeably, Crowley sits cross-legged and allows himself to be inspected by the odd creatures. Their eyes are fascinating, square pupils that lay flat instead of standing upright, like octopus eyes do. One of the goats ducks its head to lip at the hem of Crowley’s dress, and he ends up in a tug-of-war for it. 

They’re as annoying as the stupid spider crabs back home! The culprit butts him in the stomach and submits happily to an ear scritching, so Crowley amends grudgingly, Cuter, though. 

“That’s Billy,” a solemn voice announces. “You shouldn’t pet him.” 

Looking around, Crowley finds a small boy crouched beside him, well out of arms’ reach. Well, goats’ reach. He’s clutching a book to his chest and his dark hair spills around his face in messy waves.

Crowley tilts his head. What do you mean?

“My dad says he’s mean as the devil.”

Billy has decided to climb the rest of the way into Crowley’s lap in an effort to chew on the end of his braid. Billy is an idiot, but he doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. Crowley gives the silly creature’s head a rub and the boy a meaningful look. 

He rubs his nose. “‘Course, my dad says that about everything. Could just be that he’s the mean one.”

Clever child. Crowley approves of this logical workaround and says as much with a firm nod. The boy takes this as an invitation to inch closer, and even carefully reaches out to pet the goat in Crowley’s arms when it doesn’t seem as though the devil is going to make an appearance any time soon. 

“My name’s Thaddeus, after my dad,” the boy goes on, filling the silence guilelessly. “I work in the castle sometimes when I don't have lessons, washing dishes and running messages and things. I saw his highness bring you in yesterday. Miss Tracy says you don’t talk. How come?”

It’s so like a child to ask an impossible question. Crowley casts about for a way to give him an answer. On a whim, he frees one of his hands and wiggles his fingers, and mouths the word magic. 

Thaddeus’ whole face lights up. He gasps, and lifts his book to show Crowley the cover. There’s an illustration of a bearded man with a pointy hat, holding a stick with a star on one end. Thaddeus points to it, as if there’s any chance Crowley missed it. 

“Are you under a spell? Did a wizard do it to you?” he asks in a hushed whisper. “Or a warlock?”

Smiling at him, endeared by his enthusiasm, Crowley nods. Sure. A warlock. He doesn’t think Anathema would mind the designation.

“A warlock! Wow!” The boy stares at him with wide eyes. “Are you going to be okay? What are you going to do?”

Crowley puts a finger to his lips, a universal signal. It’s a secret. Any child in the world would be delighted to be in on a secret, especially a magical one. Thaddeus gasps, and then his face screws up in a moue of determination, and he nods. 

“There you are,” Fell says from above them. He looks harried and more than a little relieved to have found Crowley tucked safely away in a corner of the yard with a random child and an infamous goat. “I was afraid Gabriel managed to run you off.”

Not even the Kraken itself was enough to run Crowley off. Thaddeus helps wrestle Billy off Crowley’s person so he can climb to his feet and dust himself off. He nods goodbye to Thaddeus, who nods gravely back in the manner of someone in the know, and Fell is smiling crookedly at him when Crowley finally joins him. 

“That boy is too shy to talk to anyone,” he says. “And he’s terrified of the goats. You were only gone for ten minutes, what on earth did you do to him?”

Crowley wiggles his fingers. Fell’s smile turns into a grin. 

Days go by in a pleasant blur. 

Fell was sad when he realized Crowley didn’t know how to read any of his books, but it lasted all of three seconds; in which time, Fell recognized the opportunity to teach Crowley how to read his books, and came alive with a single-minded purpose Crowley hasn’t seen since the whole house staff forced themselves to eat Crowley’s first attempt at baked bread. 

Crowley, for his part, takes to the lessons hungrily. He has a lot of questions, and the castle has a lot of books, and this language barrier is the only thing standing in his way of getting his hands on all that knowledge. 

The first thing he writes, as he conquers the human’s alphabet, is F-E-L-L. 

Fell looks at him with an expression Crowley can’t name, his eyes as fathomless as the Atlantic. He picks up a pen and bows over the paper. Beneath FELL, he writes A-Z-I-R-A-P-H-A-L-E. 

“This is my name,” he says quietly. It feels like a treasure being passed from one hand to the next. “My full name. I stopped using it when my mother died. I think it reminded me too much of her. It’s a family name, you see.”

It’s beautiful, Crowley wishes he could tell him. Everything of yours is beautiful. 

And then it occurs to him, for the very first time, that he can introduce himself now. That Fell—Aziraphale—can know Crowley’s name, too. Maybe he’ll even say it. 

It becomes the most important thing in the whole world to hear his prince say his name.

Crowley’s mouth works silently as he makes his first translation. He forces his hand not to shake as he draws out the letters. 

C-R-O-W-L-E-Y. 

When he's done, he stares at the name on the page. His name. A hand crosses his line of sight, touches his chin and presses gently until he summons the courage to look up. 

Aziraphale is leaning forward in his chair, one elbow braced on the table, to get as close to Crowley as he can. He’s not smiling, but his expression is so tender a part of Crowley wants to flinch away from it. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says. It’s beautiful coming out of his mouth, of course it is. Everything is. “It’s wonderful to meet you.”

You, too, Crowley wails inside his head. He hopes Aziraphale knows. All I ever wanted was to meet you.

His progress after that is measured in leaps and bounds. He reads constantly. If Aziraphale isn’t around to help him with a word, any one of the house staff is happy to. Sometimes he winds up in the courtyard, reading aloud to Billy and his flock, because the poor goats need all the help they can get. 

Warlock joins him there most afternoons. The nickname is catching on, and the boy is really starting to come out of his shell. It seems to be a point of pride for him that he’s conquered his fear of the goats and made friends with the prince’s mysterious guest. The first time Crowley coaxes a laugh out of him, loud and unrestrained, he thinks, At least one good thing came of me being here.

Every evening is spent with Aziraphale. They gravitate back into the study where Crowley curls up sideways in one of the big chairs in front of the hearth while Aziraphale reads to him. The words fall from his lips and create pictures, and if Crowley closes his eyes he can almost see them. It isn’t real magic, but it’s just as good. 

It’s from the study that Crowley, lounging lazily in front of a window, happens to notice the lanterns posted at the gatehouse. There are two of them, stationed high enough to be visible from the second floor windows, probably too high to be of any practical use in the courtyard. 

He tilts his head curiously. Aziraphale follows his gaze out the window, searching for what caught his attention, and says, “Ah.”

He doesn’t say anything else right away. They just sit there together and look out at those two points of yellow light in the dark. 

“We’ve lit those every night for the last year,” Aziraphale admits. His voice is very quiet, a little self-conscious, but it doesn’t waver. “It makes me feel safe.”

Crowley leans forward earnestly. You deserve to feel safe.  He doesn’t have a pen to write with on hand, and he doesn’t want to get up to find one at the risk of breaking whatever fragile thing exists between them in this moment. I’d do anything to make sure you always felt safe.

Crowley gave up his voice so that his uncle’s curse would never touch him. He gave up his tail and his home under the sea and he would give up just about anything else that Aziraphale asked of him, too. He wouldn’t mind at all.

The human prince turns from the yellow lights to look into Crowley’s eyes instead. He doesn’t smile, but he reaches for Crowley’s hand and holds tight to it. For a second, it seems as though he won’t let go for anything. It seems as though the whole world could end and Aziraphale would still be right beside him, holding Crowley’s hand.

That night, Bentley wakes him up, walking along his shoulders and tugging at his hair until Crowley rolls over blearily. He loves this bed. He doesn’t love being dragged out of it in the middle of the night by an impatient duck.

‘Your friends are looking for you,’ she says. ‘They’re down at the cove.’ 

Crowley sits up so sharply Bentley tumbles from her perch onto the linens. His friends? 

‘The sea witch and her partner. They told me to tell you it’s important.’

Getting dressed before leaving the room has become second-nature, for all that Crowley knows Anathema won’t give a damn about his decency, and he pulls his hair back into a loose plait to keep it from being yanked around by the rough ocean winds. It’s a manner of minutes before he’s rushing down the hall to the servants’ stairs instead of the grand staircase. 

The north side of the castle faces the kingdom, and that is where the bridge and the gatehouse are situated, but the south side faces the sea. From there, one can reach the ship dock and the beach, and circumventing the wall that makes up the outer bailey is an easy feat. 

Crowley runs barefoot through the sand and stone, the saltwater thick in the air. He can feel it in his eyes, his mouth. The ocean spray dampens the legs of his trousers within minutes. It’s dark, and he doesn’t have his night-eyes anymore, so his friends spot him long before he ever would have made them out. Two indistinct shapes in the black water draw closer to the shore, and Crowley is squinting to see if it’s a couple of mermaids or just some opportunistic seals, when Anathema and Newt burst through the surface. 

“Crowley!” Anathema shouts by way of hello. “We’ve been trying to find you for days!”  

Jesus Christ, Crowley would shout back if he was able. As it is he just palms his leaping heart and recovers from his shock enough to glare at her. 

She doesn’t look apologetic in the least, but the reminder that this conversation is going to be largely one-sided is a sobering one. She drifts closer, pulling herself out of the sea and onto the sand. Newt lingers farther back with a nervous glance up the coast toward the kingdom, but his smile for Crowley is a sincere one.

“You look good,” Anathema says, a peace offering. “I bet those poor humans are falling in love with you left and right.”

Crowley takes a seat on the sand in front of her. The laundresses always despair of him getting his nice things dirty, but he doesn’t mind getting elbow-deep in a wooden trough and scrubbing linens along with the rest of them, especially because it catches him up on all the juicy gossip. It’s no different from cleaning soup pots in the kitchens on those days Aziraphale is too busy with civilian committees and council meetings to keep Crowley company. Crowley likes having things to do. Staying busy has always been the best way to keep him out of trouble.

Just yesterday, Gabriel happened upon him in the kitchen, helping the cooks prepare the midday meal. Crowley’s hair was tied up in a messy tail and he was wearing an apron around his hips and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows and altogether it was not the battle armor he would have preferred to be dressed in when confronted with his nemesis. 

But Gabriel just stared at him. It seemed to take him a moment to absorb what he was looking at. One of the cooks, a French man named Jean who feared no god or king, essentially told Gabriel he could fuck off if he wasn’t going to make himself useful. Gabriel took that as a challenge (although it really wasn’t one) and Crowley ended up with company for the rest of the afternoon, after all, as the prince’s cousin helped him debone roughly one million fish. 

Crowley doesn’t know about any poor humans falling in love with him, but at the very least he’s making friends. 

“Look,” Anathema says, “it’s about your deal. Your spell. I told you it wasn’t an exact science, remember?”

Not liking at all where this is going, Crowley nods slowly. 

“I was going through grandmother’s notes for another project I was working on, and I found a slate full of her writing that I had never seen before. Crowley,” the witch says desperately, “this spell was never meant to be permanent. It’s designed to be a gamble. It lasts for one full cycle of the moon. A little less than a month. You’ve been up here for weeks already.”

Crowley must look appropriately frightened, because she reaches for his harmless hands with her sharp, webbed ones. Her scales are cool and rough against Crowley’s soft skin, and he’s hit by a wave of homesickness so hard it knocks him breathless. 

“I can still save you,” she tells him urgently. “The deal—I can release you from it. I’m not stupid enough to write a contract without an emergency exit.”

Rearing back as though she hit him, Crowley shakes his head frantically. 

“Listen to me!” Her tone says ‘you idiot!’ “Grandmother’s spells are living things, but they’re—simple. They’re not capable of complex thought. The spell heard us talk of affection, and translated that concept into a bargain as best as it knew how.” The tips of her fingers are digging painfully into Crowley’s wrists. “You have to take your human’s heart, Crowley. Do you understand that? To win, to live, you have to take his heart. If you don’t, you’ll turn into seafoam on the first day of the new moon.”

There’s a roaring in Crowley’s ears that sounds like it belongs to the sea. The tide comes in, soaking Crowley to the waist, and he doesn’t even feel it. On one side, Bentley is digging her beak through his hair in an urgent attempt to comfort. On the other, Newt has braved the land, and he’s rubbing circles on Crowley’s back the way he did when Crowley gave up his voice. Front and center is Anathema, and her dark, clever eyes, and her determination to give Crowley a way out. 

“Let me absolve you of the deal,” she says, each word deliberate. “You can have your voice back. You can come home. You’ll miss this place, I’m sure you will, but won’t it be better to have everyone safe?”

But that’s just it. There’s still a curse inside of Crowley, and a compulsion to speak it. His voice is still the vehicle that will see it done. The first word after he’s walked on land, that’s what Lucifer said, and Crowley has walked all over this kingdom. 

Even if he swam into the deepest ocean trench he could find and whispered the word as softly as he could, the spell would find it’s mark. 

And he can’t. He can’t curse Aziraphale any more than he could cut out his heart. He would rather turn into seafoam. 

Crowley looks at Anathema and, just as deliberate as her words had been, he shakes his head. 

Anathema’s eyes are wide now. She searches Crowley’s face as though she might find a different answer there if she looks hard enough. She doesn’t understand, and Crowley can’t explain, so they’re stuck in a circle of misery. 

“What about your brothers?” she whispers. It’s a cruel blow, one Crowley flinches from, but she doesn’t let up. “They miss you. They’ve been turning the whole kingdom upside down to find you. Will it be fair to them if you just disappear for good?” 

“Wait,” Newt says suddenly, “his brothers. King Beelzebub. If anyone has magic strong enough to undo this, it’s the holder of the trident.” Unspoken is ‘if anyone has the raw power to make Crowley see reason, it’s his eldest sibling.’

Anathema jolts as though struck with lightning. “I can show them the contract. It will be proof enough that I’m not lying. I don’t think they’ll understand any more than I do why you’re being so stubborn about this, but it’s worth a shot.”

Biting his lip, hardly daring to hope, Crowley makes a decision. He turns Anathema’s hand palm-up and in strokes of his blunt fingertip, he writes U-N-C-L-E L-U-C-I against her skin in the language they both know. If she can give Bee that message, Bee will understand.

Anathema says the words aloud, to be sure of them, and Crowley nods. Anathema says, “Okay. I’ll tell them. Crowley… I’ve never had a customer die on me before. You’re not going to be the first.”

They might have said more, but Crowley senses something familiar. A dark, creeping presence, on the fringes of his awareness and coming closer. 

Oh, no.

Crowley stumbles to his feet and makes frantic scooping motions with his hands at Newt and Anathema—this way, hurry, come quickly. There’s a sea cave in the back of the cove, and he runs along the beach to show them the way. Something about his urgency compels them to do as he says without question, and once they’re inside the little grotto he holds up both hands, palm-out. Wait here. 

Merfolk are tiny creatures compared to the Kraken, and as long as they’re quiet and still and far away, they won’t even exist to him. Crowley runs back to the main shore, putting as much distance between himself and his friends as he can. 

Uncle Lucifer can always tell where Crowley is; they’re family. 

The vast triangle-shaped fin breaches the surface first, and then the trunk, and then finally the head. A round eye wider than Crowley is tall peers at him across the water. Lucifer doesn’t seem angry—maybe agitated, the way one of those huge feeding tentacles snap through the air. He waits patiently for Crowley to wade out into the water to meet him.

“What happened, darling? You’re still holding onto that curse I gave you.”

With the water lapping around his waist, Crowley realizes he has no idea how to communicate with his uncle. He’s not sure how well Lucifer will see his hands. He tries anyway, tapping his throat. 

“What’s this?” The creature comes closer. It takes every speck of willpower in Crowley’s body not to cower. “You can’t speak? Oh, Crowley. I see. Is that the price the witch’s deal took from you?”

Crowley nods frantically. His uncle heaves a massive sigh, one that sounds like the timber and rigging of a ship groaning. 

“What a shame. It was a good idea. But we’ve tried it your way, and now we’ll try it mine.”

What does that mean? Crowley screams in the prison of his own making. What the fuck does that mean?

Lucifer is retreating back into the sea, disappearing with unsettling speed for a creature so vast, and Crowley follows him as far as he can. He realizes belatedly that he’s crying, afraid for himself and for everyone else. He can barely keep his head above water. Scaly hands find his arms, and guide him to his rock—the one he hid behind on the prince’s birthday, the day he saved the prince's books, when the idea first came to him that they ought to be together.

Newt is shaking so hard that his grip on Crowley’s arm seems to be more for his own benefit than anyone else's.

Anathema whispers, “That was Uncle Luci?”

He’s sitting alone on the rock. His friends are gone, but Crowley can’t summon the strength to move. 

“Crowley?”

It’s not entirely surprising that Aziraphale is there. This is their cove, whether or not the human knows it. He’s standing ankle-deep in the surf, hands clasped tightly in front of his stomach as if to hold himself back, or keep himself together. When Crowley looks at him, his face adopts a small smile. 

“The watchmen told me you were out here. They said you’d been out here for hours.” Aziraphale wrings his hands, and adds, “When you weren’t in your room this morning, I thought—I was afraid you’d disappeared.”

No, Crowley thinks, his heart broken. Not yet. 

The moon overhead is a waxing crescent, pale and barely visible at all anymore through the rosy hues of dawn. 

Crowley may be the type of person who gives into despair, but never for long. It never really sticks. 

When Gabriel arrives to collect Aziraphale from their study in the middle of breakfast, to drag him off to some stupid meeting in an endless line of meetings, Crowley closes the door in his face.

And locks it, just to make a point.

Aziraphale is staring, a cup of tea halfway extended to his mouth. Crowley points at him.

“Me?” 

Crowley curls his hand back to point at himself with his thumb. 

“And you.”

He points to the window. 

“What?”

But he gets on board quickly. The two of them creep out through the terrace and mince their way down a set of service stairs into the courtyard, ducking around corners like thieves. There’s no way to sneak past the gatehouse—if it were that easy, security would definitely be a big problem—but the guard laughingly promises not to tell Gabriel which way they went. 

They take one of the smaller carriages down a road lined on either side with fruit-bearing trees. Aziraphale is giggling, flushed and wind-blown, because he’s never done anything like this before. 

Crowley gazes at him, aching with how much care he’s got rattling around in his heart for him. He can’t give him much of anything, but Crowley is going to give Aziraphale one good day. A really good day. 

And then he’ll say goodbye. 

It will hurt. He knows it will. It’s hurting already. Aziraphale has been left behind before and it left its marks on him, for all that he wears them with grace. Crowley hates that he’s going to add to the weight that Aziraphale has to carry, but he can’t think of a way around it.

Crowley won’t be the thing that kills him. He won’t.

Aziraphale takes his hand to help him out of the carriage, and Crowley forgets to let it go. They roam the market, where Aziraphale greets the stall owners by name, and eat sweets until they’re sick, and they even dance in the square. Crowley doesn’t know the steps, but it hardly matters. Aziraphale’s round face is bright and full. He hasn’t stopped smiling since Crowley convinced him of this mad plan in the first place. 

They watch a play. They drink wine. They dance some more. At one point, Crowley tugs Aziraphale behind a fruit cart when the furious thundercloud of Gabriel goes storming by. The vendor looks at them in polite confusion that very barely manages to cover up her amusement, and Aziraphale sheepishly purchases a small basket of apples.

When the sun has begun to set, they take the carriage back up to the castle. The basket of apples rides in Crowley’s lap. He cuts into one with Aziraphale’s pocket knife, peeling away the skin the way the cooks taught him, cutting slivers out of it until he has six neat pieces. 

Since Aziraphale’s hands are busy with the reins, Crowley lifts the first piece of apple to his mouth. Aziraphale dips his head to eat it. Both of them are still riding the high of their stolen day, their feet sore and their faces flushed from the sun, and Crowley doesn’t think it occurs to either of them how intimate the moment is until Aziraphale’s lips touch Crowley’s fingers. 

Aziraphale’s face is as red as Crowley’s hair by the time they get home, as red as the whole apple he let Crowley feed him piece by piece. 

The handlers sweep out to take charge of the horses and the carriage. Tracy hooks an arm through Crowley’s and demands that they tell her all about their day. Everyone is smiling, and no one mentions anything about their king having disappeared for hours, and Gabriel is nowhere to be found. 

This is a moment that crystallizes in Crowley’s memory. He is not really a human, no matter what Anathema’s spell made him look like, and he is not truly a part of Aziraphale’s kingdom, and he has no real place in his home, despite the kindness of the staff in making room for him at every turn—but in this moment, he belongs. In this moment, every single person in that dusty, goat-infested courtyard has one obvious, shining thing in common. 

Does he see it? If Crowley could say just one thing without tragedy, he would ask Aziraphale, Do you see how loved you are? 

Aziraphale walks with Crowley to the bedroom that has somehow become his. He’s wearing this pretty, peaceful smile that Crowley is doing his best to memorize without being too obvious about it. 

When it's time to bid one another goodnight, Crowley gathers his nerve. This is it: goodbye. This is the deal Crowley struck with himself. This is when he begins the painful parting, to spare Aziraphale as much heartache as he can.

But Aziraphale disarms him completely. He takes Crowley’s hand, and lifts it to his mouth, and presses a kiss to its knuckles. 

“Thank you, my dear,” he says. “For everything.”

His heart up in his throat, all Crowley can do is nod dumbly. His hand is on fire where Aziraphale kissed it. Whatever resolve he'd managed to scrape together is fully gone.

Tomorrow.

He’ll say goodbye tomorrow. 

“I hope the two of you had fun yesterday, because I sure as hell didn’t,” Gabriel bitches first thing in the morning. 

Aziraphale rolls his eyes. Crowley beams at the show of attitude—there’s hope for him yet—and snaps his fingers at Gabriel until the big guy shuts up long enough to look at him. He pinches his thumb and forefinger together, then points down at Gabriel’s plate; a succinct shut your stupid mouth and eat already. 

Tracy manages to turn her bark of laughter into a passable cough at the last second. Aziraphale doesn’t. 

Gabriel, who can handle a moment of silence about as well as Crowley handled the hot coal he curiously picked out of the hearth on his third day here, eats two bites of his oats before he blurts, “I had to talk to a lot of people about a lot of things because you just disappeared, and I hated it. So don’t do it again.”

Aziraphale sighs. “I won’t, Gabriel. Show me those documents you’ve been carrying around with you, since you seem to think they’re important.”

Crowley picks disinterestedly at his food, tuning out the business talk. The moon was hardly a sliver in the sky last night, barely there at all. Crowley probably only has today left, maybe tomorrow. He hasn’t heard anything from Anathema since the encounter on the beach, and Bentley has been keeping a close eye on the coast for him, so he doesn’t miss an appearance from her or his siblings.

His stomach twists. At the very least, he’d like to say goodbye to his siblings. He wants to apologize for always being such a pain. He wants to beg them to protect Aziraphale when he’s gone. He doesn’t know what Lucifer is planning, but he knows it can’t be anything good. 

Across the table, Gabriel says, “Huh, I don’t remember this one. How’d it get here?” 

“Let me see.”

Crowley looks up in time to watch Gabriel pass a thick envelope over to Aziraphale’s outstretched hand. Something about it makes an alarm bell start ringing in the back of Crowley’s head. 

He sits up, squinting at it. The closer he looks, the less it looks like an envelope. The crisp lines and stiff corners dissolve like a mirage, until the thing that Azirapahle is holding is a knot of seaweed. He doesn’t seem to realize this. He’s still reaching for the wax seal. 

Don’t!

Crowley leaps to his feet, knocking a plate off the table. It shatters, and Gabriel flinches at the sudden sound, but Aziraphale is spellbound. Crowley rounds the table at a run to knock the illusion out of his hands, to hurl it across the room, to grab Aziraphale up and drag him far away—away from the ocean that ate his mother and keeps trying to eat him, away from his lovely kingdom and it’s lovely people, to a place where there’s no coast for a hundred miles, just waving grass and apple trees and a hill for the stupid goats and a room where Aziraphale can read to Crowley from his favorite books—

But he’s too late. 

The seaweed lands on the table with a disgusting splatter, and Gabriel jumps back, knocking his chair over.

“What the fuck?” Any other time, the shock on a face usually so self-assured would have been priceless. “How did it—? Fell, what are you doing?”

Their prince is on his feet, walking away. The sunny dining hall is suddenly cast into shadow, the sky outside churning hurricane-gray. A few of the staff have come to investigate the sound of a broken dish. When they reach out to Aziraphale, he brushes by them as though they aren’t there. 

Crowley plants himself in front of Aziraphale like a tree, hands on the human’s shoulders. Aziraphale tries to walk right through him, eyes unfocused and vacant, all the color in them gone. Crowley grits his teeth and stands his ground, vicious with determination. 

Oh, no you don’t. 

There’s panic in the courtyard at the unnatural weather, and panic inside at the Aziraphale’s unnatural behavior. Everyone is talking all at once. A large hand lands on Crowley’s shoulder, jostling him, and it’s enough of a distraction that Aziraphale gains a whole two steps before Crowley can anchor him again. 

He whips around, snarling. Gabriel lifts his hand away but he doesn’t retreat. 

“What’s happening?” he demands. “What’s wrong with him? What was that—envelope?”

Lightning streaks across the sky outside, followed immediately by a boom of thunder that rattles the window panes. Aziraphale suddenly pushes harder, as if galvanized by the building storm outside, and Crowley is knocked off his feet. 

His head hits the stone floor with a sickening crack. 

Everything is muffled for a moment, as though underwater. The vaulted ceiling overhead pitches back and forth like a ship caught in a storm. After a few false starts, Crowley manages to push himself upright. Small hands help tug him to his feet, and Warlock stares up at him with big, frightened eyes.

“Prince Fell is outside. Miss Tracy and Gabriel are trying to stop him.”

Cold terror urges Crowley into motion. He spares Warlock a single fierce glance and points him back into the dining hall where the rest of the house staff is clustered anxiously. Stay here. The walls won’t hold back everything his uncle is capable of throwing at them, but they will ensure Aziraphale’s people enough time to escape if they must. 

He springs down the service stairs and bursts out onto the ocean-facing veranda. Gabriel’s voice is easy to follow even with the howling wind snatching it away in fits and starts. Crowley runs after him without a second thought, across the dock, through the outer bailey, and down the stretch of shore line that bends around to meet the cove. 

That’s where he catches up to them; Aziraphale is marching inexorably, his cousin and his steward on either side of him, begging him to snap out of it, to see reason. Crowley likes them both, but he’s calling them ten different kinds of idiot as he shoulders his way past. 

Hold him, Crowley wishes he could shout. Hold onto him, like he fucking means something to you.

This time, Crowley throws all of his body weight into slowing Aziraphale down. It’s not a lot of weight, really, but at least it slows him down. 

Getting with the program, Gabriel wraps his arms around Aziraphale from behind. Tracy is crying quietly as she takes one of Aziraphale’s hands in both of hers. Finally, with this combined effort, he stops moving. 

His body is still thrumming with outside influence, this magical compulsion that has carried him almost all the way out to the sea. His beautiful face is slack and empty. Crowley feels the loss of him keenly, for all that they’re only inches apart. 

Come back, he thinks, blinking away tears. Don’t go. I’m the one who’s leaving. You have to stay.

The ocean is boiling, a few fishing boats capsizing right there in the harbor. The air is so thick with static his skin is prickling and his hair is standing upright. These humans that Crowley cares about are too close to danger. 

He snaps his fingers at Gabriel, a shadow of the way he did it at the breakfast table just to make Aziraphale and Tracy laugh. When Gabriel looks at him, Crowley spares him a smile. He nods at the palace behind them.

“Right,” Gabriel says hoarsely. He clears his throat, and says it again, more strongly this time. “Right. There’s no sense in wandering around the beach in a storm. I’ll carry Fell, you two stay behind me.”

This will be the hard part. Crowley shakes his head. 

“What? What does that mean?”

He presses a hand to his chest. I’m staying. 

“Um, no. What?”

“Crowley, don’t do this, whatever this is,” Tracy says. She’s terribly pale and tear-stricken, and still looks as though she’s going to hold her family together by sheer willpower if it comes down to it. “Come back with us. We’ll work out a solution together.”

Crowley looks back at Aziraphale. He touches the prince’s cheek reverently, the way he sometimes touched the crumbling statue in his garden when he was young.

He has seen his uncle’s magic, dark tendrils of power that curse and cause pain. He has seen Anathema’s magic, strict and scrupulously fair. He has seen Bee’s magic, powerful enough to provide for the entire kingdom in small ways, like keeping the food fresh and the glowing stones lit.

And the humans have it, too. It’s not as performative. If you blink you might miss it. But Crowley has seen it. He’s always seen it—in the ageless artistry of carved marble, and in the proud lines of the ships sleeping under the sea, and in the boy who was kind even when it got him into trouble. Beautiful things. 

He plucks out his necklace from where it’s hiding beneath the collar of his dress and pulls it off. The gold ring bounces cheerfully on the delicate chain he replaced the old wet cord with. If he focuses hard, he can still feel the hum of Bee’s power, the charm they placed on the ring to keep it safe from the water. Maybe it’s strong enough to protect Aziraphale, too.

Crowley loops the chain around Aziraphale's head and thinks, Keep him safe, keep him safe, keep him safe. He deserves to be safe. 

And then he draws away. Aziraphale lurches forward, but Gabriel’s grip on him tightens. 

‘Crowley!’ Bentley calls from overhead. She’s struggling through the gale to reach him, frantic. ‘The sea monster is here, it’s killing everything in its way! You can’t let it get any closer!’ 

Right. He’s doing this. He glares at Gabriel, points violently back toward the palace, touches Tracy’s arm gently, and then breaks into a run. 

He passed a beached rowboat earlier and he returns to it now. Shoving it into the water and heaving himself clumsily over the side, Crowley looks at Bentley, sitting on the seat opposite his. He is wild-eyed and breathless, on the cusp of something dangerous and stupid and ultimately pointless, and she hasn’t even called him an idiot yet. 

As if sensing exactly where his thoughts have gone, Bentley says, ‘You’re being really brave. I’ll call you an idiot later, when we've somehow managed to survive this. Now start rowing.’

He starts rowing.

Crowley’s arms don’t look it, but they’re strong; they have to be, for all the swimming he’s done. Even still, forcing a tiny boat through rough waves in a particular direction is no simple task. After twenty minutes, he’s sweating and his muscles are burning and his injured head is pounding as if in solidarity. 

“There’s my rebellious nephew.” 

That smooth, invasive voice seems to come from all directions. Crowley stops rowing and peers over the edge of his boat like there’s any hope he might be able to see through the stormy water. 

“Imagine my surprise when I realized you had deliberately thwarted me. And I thought we were on the same page, darling.” 

That’s because you’re a six-thousand year old sociopath, Crowley thinks with an edge of hysteria, as well as an asshole. He jerks his head at Bentley—clearly a get out of here—but she just puffs her feathers out and stubbornly stays put. 

“So what is your plan?” The Kraken sounds amused. “How are you going to stop me? I could crush your boat right now and watch you drown in that pathetic body if I chose to.”

A tentacle comes up out of the water. The closest thing to a weapon that Crowley has is an oar, and it’s downright laughable that he thinks he might even have a chance, but he lifts it anyway. The difference between drowning now and turning into seafoam tomorrow is that in one of those scenarios he chooses to be brave.

It was worth it, Crowley thinks. It’s a small, quavering thought, but it makes it through the dark spiral of his fear and regret. If it ends now, it was worth it. 

But before his uncle can make good on his threat, the water around the two of them suddenly grows calm. The storm clouds in the sky begin to dissipate. A glow emerges from the depths between monster and boat and solidifies itself into a shield, an iridescent sheen of red-and-purple that Crowley would know absolutely anywhere. 

Sure enough, the King appears head and shoulders above the sea a heartbeat later, trident in hand. Crowley has never been so happy to see Bee in his entire life. 

“Don’t you dare get in my way,” Lucifer says. His voice is a dangerous growl, the patronizing amusement a thing of the past. It sends a shiver down Crowley’s spine. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“It didn’t,” drawls Bee carelessly, for all the world as though they’re not staring down the literal Kraken, “until you got my family involved. Crowley may be more trouble than he’s worth at the best of times, and a tricky little shit at the worst, but he’s still my brother. Get your ugly tentacles away from him and go find a rock to suck on.”

‘Okay,’ Bentley says faintly. ‘So you’re all insane. It just runs in your family. Okay, that makes sense.’

Crowley’s brothers surface next to his boat, looking angry enough to strangle Crowley with their bare hands and also relieved to see him. It’s impressive that they manage to combine both expressions so effortlessly, but they have had eighteen years of practice by now. His friends are right behind them. Newt looks as though his soul left his body some time ago and now he’s running entirely on autopilot and a sense of loyalty; Anathema looks ready for a fight. 

“Sorry it took us so long,” she says by way of hello. “The palace guards were extremely annoying. Easy enough to sneak past, though.”

Crowley could kiss her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hastur spits furiously. “After all the other shit you’ve pulled, you decided the open ocean was the best place for you to be right now?”

I had to try, Crowley babbles for no one’s benefit but his own, gesturing wildly. Don’t you think I know how stupid this was?

“Crowley, of all people, giving away his voice,” Ligur grumbles. “If I hadn’t seen the contract for myself, I would never have believed it.”  

Crowley’s brothers begin to tow the boat back in the direction of land. Newt helps, while Anathema swims alongside and keeps an eye on Crowley, as if to make sure he doesn’t throw himself into the sea to chase another bullshit idea to death.

“A stick,” Hastur goes on, clearly not over it. “You saw that, Ligur? He was going to fight Lucifer with a bloody stick. We always said we did our best when it came to raising him but clearly we fucked up somewhere.”

“Can King Beelzebub handle that— uncle of yours?” Anathema had been about to use a much stronger word. Crowley doesn’t blame her. “The power of the trident is enough to stop him, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not,” Ligur says shortly. It makes Crowley feel as though he’s swallowed ice. “It’s enough to buy us some time to get away and that’s about it.”

“They both draw magic from the same source,” Hastur adds, grim. “Family source. The trident’s a mighty amplifier, but Ol’ Lucifer’s been accumulating power for millennia. Beelzebub don’t stand a chance.”

Crowley rushes to the bow, rocking the boat this way and that, so that he can stare at Hastur in horror. 

“What now?” 

He points adamantly back at the sibling they’re leaving behind. We have to help!

“Forget it, Crowley. There’s no way. The only thing powerful enough to defeat Lucifer is Lucifer.”

And then—

The idea comes slowly, inexorably, like a stream of bright water picking its way around doubt and uncertainty. He darts a swift look at Anathema to find her looking steadily back at him. He presses a hand to his chest and nods in Lucifer's direction, hoping the gesture communicates all the impossible things he needs it to. 

Whether or not it does, Anathema takes a deep breath. With a sharp word of power, Hastur and Ligur suddenly go limp, eyes closed and faces slack with sleep. Their hands slip from the boat and they sink safely into the sea. 

“That’ll wear off in a few minutes,” Anathema says, getting right down to business. “So let me say this quick. I didn’t understand why you were so certain about giving up your voice. It seemed foolish at first, like you weren’t taking our deal seriously, or didn’t realize what it meant to pay the price I was asking of you. It wasn’t until that night at the cove—when you looked so frightened—that I realized there had to be a reason for it. I won’t pretend I understand the entire situation, but I think I’ve got the gist. You have something. Something your uncle gave you, that you’re afraid of. And you think you can use it against him.”

Crowley grabs her hands where they rest on the side of the boat and gives her a fierce nod. I know I can. 

Anathema smiles. It looks a little shaky. She frees a hand to reach into the satchel at her side and withdraws the flask full of starlight. 

“You know what this is. Don’t swallow it until you’re ready.”

Behind them, Beelzebub’s shield is beginning to crack. Lucifer is inching closer, towering, terrifying—but not the scariest thing Crowley has ever seen. The scariest thing would be the ship that burned a year ago, pitching a beautiful human into the mercy of the sea. Or the lifeless sprawl of Aziraphale’s body on the beach, when it seemed for a moment as though Crowley hadn’t managed to save him after all. Or the way he looked this morning when Lucifer’s curse took him, the way his eyes had turned dull and unfeeling.

In fact, Crowley realizes, flask clutched tight in hand, Uncle Luci is not even as scary as the possibility that one of Crowley’s siblings might die today. Or the chance that Anathema and Newt might get hurt. Or the faint, vague notion that Aziraphale will never wake up again if Crowley fails.

His uncle is a monster, almost too big to be true, but he is just a monster. 

Beelzebub goes down with a sharp cry, a sound Crowley has never heard them make before. Their shield disappears, and Lucifer rears back in ugly triumph. It's just the two of them now, and Lucifer doesn't hesitate to move in for the kill. His powerful limbs come up out of the water and fall toward Crowley like the trunks of ancient trees.

Crowley puts the flask to his lips, swallowing his voice back down, and the dormant curse waiting in his chest springs to sudden life. It races up Crowley’s throat and out of his mouth in the shape of a single word that he’s never heard before and will never hear again. It disintegrates water, scorches the air, a living, feral animal intent only on the destruction of its target. 

And that's as much as he sees before he falls backwards into the bottom of the boat, gasping and aching and, oddly enough, so thirsty he feels like he could die. 

Crowley wakes up to the feeling of fingers in his hair. The sunlight is warm against his skin and the sea is lapping around his hips and chest and shoulders in friendly little eddies, no longer stirred into a wild frenzy. He’s cradled comfortably against something soft. 

“He's awake now,” Ligur growls. “Stop coddling him.”

“No, I don’t think I will, thank you,” Aziraphale replies mildly. 

Crowley turns his face against damp cotton to hide a grin. He always secretly thought that having his brothers and his prince in the same room would be a riot, because Aziraphale can be a bit of a bastard when you least expect it, and his brothers would never know when to expect it.

Wait. 

His eyes fly open. 

He’s in the shallow waters of the cove. His fishtail is gleaming, drifting idly back and forth with the push and pull of the tide, the red-black scales vivid against the pale cream-colored dress he put on this morning. There are two strong arms around him, and his head is pillowed against a broad chest.

Crowley looks up with wide eyes. Aziraphale gasps, and gathers him up close and tight, as though it will take a whole entire second Kraken to convince him to let go. 

“It was you,” he whispers. “I knew it was you. The night I went overboard—those yellow eyes, floating in the dark—they were yours.”

“If no one else is going to say it, I will,” Gabriel interjects. Bentley is sitting on his knee, and neither of them look thrilled about it. “Holy fuck? What the fuck? What was that?”

“Uncle Luci,” Anathema says dryly. Newt remains half-hidden behind her, obviously not sold on these strangers, but he offers Crowley a smile. 

Tracy is sitting next to Beelzebub in the shallow water with no regard for the state of her clothes and seemingly no misgivings about her proximity to the ruler of the seven seas. When Crowley’s bewildered gaze drifts her way, she pins him with the sternest expression he’s ever seen her wear. 

“You scared me half to death, running off like that into that terrible storm. And then that creature came up out of the sea—everyone was worried sick about you. You owe Eva and Jean and little Warlock an apology.”

Crowley wilts beneath the scolding. Hastur and Ligur, and to a lesser extent, Beelzebub, stare in open-mouthed shock. Every fight they’ve ever had with Crowley in his entire life combined would probably have been about half as effective as this middle-aged human’s gentle reprimand, and it’s clear they have no idea how to feel about that. 

“I don’t care about any apology,” says Gabriel, probably because he knows he’s unlikely to get one, “but I would like an explanation. Let’s start with what the hell happened today.”

Crowley is lifting his hands to begin trying to act out an answer when Beelzebub splashes him abruptly with a slap of their flukes. He sputters, and grimaces sympathetically when Aziraphale winces and rubs saltwater out of his own eyes with the collar of his shirt, and turns on his oldest sibling with a glare that could put even the most stubborn of sea coral firmly in its place. 

Bee just raises their brow at him. 

“It’s nice to see that you know how to keep your mouth shut for longer than ten seconds at a time,” they say dryly. “But spare us the guessing game and just spit it out.”

Confused, Crowley touches his throat. It’s a practiced gesture, one he’s made over and over for the last month, but as he does it this time, he remembers a flask of shimmering light and a curse that tore out of his body in his own voice. 

The deal—Anathema said she could break it. His uncle’s curse—his whole uncle—is gone. No one else is going to die. Crowley isn’t going to turn into seafoam. There is nothing stopping him from spinning around, full of something like sunlight, to make sure the first word he says is, “Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale looks at him with such ferocious, burning devotion that Crowley has to blink and look away; but then his face is being cupped in his human’s gentle hands, and he's being kissed as though he’s something precious, something drinkable. 

Somehow, they’ve managed to find a place where two worlds overlap. Or they’ve managed to create one. Crowley doesn’t really care how they got here, as long as they get to stay.