The Good AUmens AU Fest is an event of over 100 authors and artists, all producing new alternate universe works based on a prompt that was assigned to them. They’ve been at work since early March and the works will debut during the month of June.
This is the fifth of five weekly masterposts. (There will also be an addendum masterpost in late July, containing any works that post during the amnesty period, which will run from July 1-21.)
[ Links to previous masterposts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 ]
Works arranged by date posted
June 28
Ace Attorney AU: Anthony J. Crowley, Esq., Ace Attorney by @leilakalomi
Arthurian AU: Wyfe and Quene by @seterasilence
Arranged Marriage AU: The Myth of Aziraphale by @shay-moonsilk
Psychics AU: The Beautiful Stranger by @elwinglyre
Magic Users AU: Into the Dark by @rosemoonweaver
High Fantasy AU: Volatile Spirits by @ultrakahlannightwing
June 29
Meet on Vacation AU: The Love Boat (Or How Crowley got his Groove Back) by @yarsian
Summer Camp Counselors AU: Nothing and Nowhere is Golden by @shout-cast
Fishermen AU: it will not be enough by @bestoftheseekwill
Fairy Tale AU: The Enchanted Snake by @epi-vet
June 30
Pirate AU: Tied to the Ocean by @lordvoldemortsnipple
Western AU: Bridled Hope by @imnotokaywiththerunning
Hi! I Dare You to: Crowley & Aziraphale have. frog & Toad like adventure💚
Okay, now that you say this I can’t unsee them as Frog (Az) and Toad (Crowley)
Have you seen that post about Frog and Toad being gay?
This is totally based on the story of Toad hibernating.
II
Crowley’s flat was black. Not just dark, but devoid of any light except for the torch that Azeraphale was carrying. The air smelled mostly, as if no one had breathed in the space for months. Probably longer. It had been more than six years since he’d seen Crowley, and four years since he’d heard anything about him.
“Crowley?” There were black silk sheets on the bed; it shouldn’t surprise him but he’d never given much thought to how Crowley slept. There were two windows in the room, both far away from the only drawing hanging on the wall. he wouldn’t harm it by pulling up the shades. Light flooded the room, illuminating a sleeping demon in a bed, two nightstands, and a single dresser. The room was as sleek and sparse as the bookshop was crowded and jumbled.
“Crowley, it’s time to wake up. I’ve found this lovely new thing called cereal and I’ve brought some with me to share.” What he didn’t say was that he was lonely. Once it wouldn’t have been strange to go decades without seeing Crowley, but since The Deal they saw each other more often. In the few years after the church disaster they’d seen each other sometimes monthly. A little less after the war ended. And then not at all for six years. In reality the cereal was an easy excuse.
“Angel? What year is it?” Crowley didn’t open his eyes or move. He might not have even spoken.
“It’s nineteen fifty-six. March, I think. Maybe it’s June.” It was hard enough to keep track of years, let alone months.
“I’ve put in an alarm for sixty-one. Two years of the fifties were enough; everyone is too damn cheerful. The colors are hideous and have you seen those skirts?” Crowly rolled over, pulling the sheet over his head. His hair was still rather short; Aziraphale liked it better a little longer, especially on top.
“I must admit that modern cuisine isn’t a treat either. Someone’s invented this horrible thing called a tv dinner. Your lot had a hand in it, I’m sure.” Aziraphale looked to the bed, where Crowley was suspiciously silent. “Crowley?”
“Just five more years,” he muttered.
Aziraphale sighed and sat at the end of the bed. He should leave. Another five years alone, though, seemed interminable. He ate a bowl of cereal in Crowley’s kitchen and watered Crowley’s plans, crooning a lullaby to them. They must be awfully lonely if Crowley had been sleeping the last four years, but they were remarkably green and healthy. While he was washing his bowl he had an idea. It would barely take even a small miracle; surely no one would notice. he held a hand over Crowley’s clock and watched the numbers fly quicker and quicker, covering five years in less than three minutes. The alarm went off.
“Crowley, it’s time to wake up. It’s nineteen sixty-one,” he lied easily. Lying barely counted when you were lying to a demon, probably.
“Angel?” Crowley asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to pick up some crêpes in Paris and thought I’d stop here first to see if you were feeling peckish after your nap. Would you care to join me?”
“You came to invite me to breakfast?” Crowley sat up; his pajamas were a deep wine colored satin.
“It’s the most important meal of the day.” Aziraphale tilted his head to the side. Breaking your fast is even more important when you haven’t eaten for a few years.”
“We’re not human, angel. We don’t have to eat.”
“No, but it’s one of the treats of this world and after seeing some of the things they’re doing to food these days it’s nice to remember that crêpes exist.” Aziraphale waited for a moment. When Crowley stood his pajamas shimmered and darkened, the sleeping clothes gone and in their place a suit.
“I wouldn’t mind a bottle of wine or two. The French are still good at that, I hope.”
Aziraphale nodded and hoped they wouldn't run into any calendars or newspapers with dates before they reached a cafe. After a few bottles of wine it wouldn't matter.
This was written as a gift for the marvelous @shout-cast as a thank-you for donating to the fundraiser to help with the recovery after Storm Dennis. That fundraiser can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/helpwalesafterstormdennis
For the foreseeable future* of that gofundme camapign, you can message me with some sort of proof that you contributed and I’ll write you a little 500-1k word ficlet as a thank-you! (*Gofundmes don’t have a set duration. I probably won’t honor this 5 years from now.) Click here for full details!
Anyway, shout-cast’s prompt was for “maybe a little cooking fluff, trying a new recipe?” and here we go:
The best time to start cooking coq au vin, in Aziraphale’s opinion, is in the early 1800s in rural France right after your least favorite rooster turns two years old. The second best time to start cooking coq au vin is two days before your demonic best friend comes back from a work assignment to Norilsk.
(“Norilsk,” Crowley had said, slumped as low as he could without sliding off of Aziraphale’s sofa entirely, “ever been?”
“Never had the pleasure,” Aziraphale had said, and he’d sipped his brandy.
“Here’s your chance. It’s an easy job—just two little temptations.”
“Thank you, but no. This corporation doesn’t handle the cold well.”
Crowley had been so incensed he really had fallen off of the sofa. “That corporation?” he’d demanded. “I’m an actual snake!”)
You have to start cooking two days before, you see, because the secret to a good modern coq au vin—since rooster blood went out of fashion as a thickening agent—is a hearty stock with plenty of gelatin in it. So before you even get around to the actual stew itself, you break down the hens and use their backbones and feet and some vegetable scraps and let it all simmer for as long as you can stand and you think about how there’s only two days left until he’s back, and how every hour the stock simmers is an hour closer to things being as they should be, and what Norilsk might have been like, and how long he’s going to pretend to be put out with you because you didn’t go in his place.
That last part is optional.
Remember to take the bay leaf out when you’re done. If you’re thinking ahead (if you’re searching for things to do with your hands, if you need to fill time because it’s going so slowly and Norilsk is so far away), you can marinate the chicken overnight with a nice red wine (perhaps La Tâche, like the one you had after the crêpes that time he appeared to save you from an ignominious end at the hands of an overly enthusiastic executioner).
Then the day before you actually want to share your coq au vin with your friend—the day before he comes home, that is—it’s time to assemble the dish. Modern hens don’t need a long braise like old roosters would; just pull the chicken out of the marinade after you’ve browned the salt pork and pat it dry, being sure to reserve the marinade—
A knock on the shop door interrupted Aziraphale’s reverie.
“We’re closed,” he shouted, but the little bell rang anyway and that should not happen, there was only one being who would just open his locked door after knocking, which meant that the best time to start this coq au vin should actually have been the day before yesterday, because Crowley was home.
Crowley would almost certainly laugh if he heard that thought. “I was gone a week,” he’d likely say, and Aziraphale would have to laugh and say “Yes, it’s silly isn’t it, barely even had time to notice that you were gone,” and he would be lying.
The shop creaked as Crowley moved through it.
“Aziraphale?”
“In the kitchen,” he called, and he continued patting the chicken dry, because even though Crowley was back now and not when the coq au vin was ready, the chicken still needed browning.
(“Why d’you do it that way?” Crowley had once asked, peering dubiously at Aziraphale as the angel peeled an onion by hand.
“Which way?” Aziraphale had asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious of his peeling methods.
“Actually doing it. You could just—” he snapped his fingers demonstratively “—have the food. No need to make it.”
“It’s better when you do it the old-fashioned way,” Aziraphale said, which was both true and much easier than the other truth, which was that he enjoyed being a part of the process, enjoyed making a thing with the direct intention of Crowley enjoying it.
Crowley had snorted. “That’s not old-fashioned, angel. Old-fashioned is speaking it into existence.”)
And then Crowley was crossing the threshold of the kitchen, wrapped in an absurdly puffy jacket that made Aziraphale sweat just to look at. The demon shrugged it off; it winked out of existence just before hitting the floor.
And then there was a moment—one of the strange moments that seemed to crop up every now and again, lately with increasing frequency—when they both hesitated, like they were expecting something of themselves or each other, only they didn’t know what.
Then it passed.
“Didn’t take as long as I thought,” Crowley said.
“Lucky, that,” said Aziraphale, and he picked up the kitchen tongs and began placing chicken into the pot. It sizzled in the rendered pork fat. “You’re back too early for supper, but just in time to help.”
“What’re we making?”
Aziraphale’s mind caught on that, on “what are we making,” and on how it felt to hear that, but what he said was just: “Coq au vin. It’s...warm.”
Crowley was very still, and Aziraphale thought that perhaps this was another of those moments. Then the demon rolled up his sleeves and walked over to the sink, where he washed his hands, and they set to work.
They’d never cooked together before, Aziraphale realized as he was coaching Crowley through the browning process for the vegetables. For that matter, he wasn’t certain that Crowley had ever cooked at all. Aziraphale made food for them both plenty of times, and Crowley occasionally kept him company, but he’d never been an active participant before, never diced and stirred, never accidentally brushed against the angel while moving from one counter to the other.
When they had the chicken legs nestled into the vegetables and simmering in stock and wine and the pot in the oven to roast and braise, it seemed only appropriate to open another bottle of the Tâche and toast to Crowley’s safe return. It had been, Crowley mentioned time and again, excessively cold.
“Bitter cold,” the demon said meaningfully.
“So you mentioned,” Aziraphale said.
“Going to take me another week just to thaw.”
“Time does heal all wounds.”
“Not frostbite!” Crowley said, but the kitchen timer went off and the business of adding the chicken breasts to the pot put that conversation on hold.
The second best time to finish coq au vin is the day after you prepare the bulk of the dish: after you’ve simmered everything to perfection, you should let the temperature settle and put the whole covered pot into your fridge overnight to let the flavors deepen and mature, then bring it back up to temperature before mixing in some butter for the last bit of magic in the sauce, and serve.
But there are any number of factors which can impact a recipe—humidity, ambient temperature, ingredient quality and regionality, the list goes on. So it turns out that the best time to finish coq au vin is approximately two hours after your demonic best friend shows up in your shop after a work assignment in Norilsk. It was an exceptional dish. The way Crowley wrapped his hands around the warm bowl and preened when Aziraphale complimented his cooking was even nicer.
List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box of the last 10 people who reblogged something from you. Learn to know your mutuals and followers. ✨ (Only if you want! No pressure! 😘)
I love this ask, and although positive thinking and gratitude are oversold in importance for psychological wellbeing/as treatment, they can feel really nice!
Thank you for asking, @shout-cast!
1. Coming up with stories together with people makes me incredibly happy.
2. The state of the perennial garden that my wife cultivated over four years and who knows how many hours of work has really come into its own and we’ll have flowers until late October, and a few even in winter (because hellebore are just Like That).
3. Gift fics make me just, like, stupidly happy, alongside mentions of thanks for beta-ing. Just. Really, stupidly happy, even when my focus is shit and I’m behind in reading them.
4. I’ve figured out a new way to do my hair while it’s growing out, and it has a vaguely Victorian feel, and places to tuck roses into if I want.
5. I have several colors of fountain pen inks in pens and I can use them for work stuff. Green/brown so dark it’s almost black, greeny-brown, teal, magenta, and a vermillion/orange kind of color. Waiting on another (cheap!) pen to fill with an indigo blue.s
It was a stealth hit! Like, I’m at the theater sometimes (usually for Marvel or Star Wars) and I don’t remember ever seeing previews, or any talk about it. But DAMN.
You know what else I saw recently that cracked me the fuck up? The Hitman’s Bodyguard. I actually had seen a preview for that one, but had forgotten about it, and the movie was a hoot. I mean, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel Jackson. And it was SO funny, after Deadpool, to see R.R. playing this straight-laced, rule-following tightass.
shout-cast replied to your post “Fellow American talking about an English book set in England that was...”
�������� America: not the center of the universe you think you are
I mean a lot of people have that problem, but I think America is worse because our schools suck and geography is NOT an encouraged subject, so like. Literally half the educated population can’t tell you where any land-locked country is. Our education may be “mandatory” but it sure as hell isn’t globally inclusive, and any curiosity about the world outside America is subtly discouraged until college.
I wrote a long rant then realized it was really very America-centric so uh I’ll just say that America is fucked up. Also the obsession in schools with “American literary greats” is fucking exhausting because they’re all old white men who lived in roughly the same time period.
