Oh, Better Far to Live or Discorporate

Where pirates all are well-to-do

There were footsteps on the ladder. Crowley clicked his fingers and the sofa and delicacies vanished.

"Good gracious!" Aziraphale landed unceremoniously on his shapely bottom. Crowley, not caught unaware, had sprung to his feet. He automatically snaked an arm around his back to prevent the angel from toppling over backwards.

"Sorry," he said a bit breathlessly, and they stared at each other a moment, Aziraphale sitting on the floor in all his finery, Crowley bent over him with his arm around him. Aziraphale's eyelashes lowered in confusion and then snapped up warily, and Crowley sprang back as if his arm was burning.

Unfortunately, Crowley had forgotten about the manacles. His arms batted the air for a moment before he tumbled backward, hitting his head sharply against the wooden floor. He closed his eyes against the sudden burst of pain.

"Crowley!" Aziraphale scrambled over to him. "You idiot demon, are you all right?"

Crowley opened his eyes. There were still sparks of pain, and he felt a little discombobulated. He was aware he was flat on his back, Aziraphale was on his hands and knees over him and looking tenderly, despite his tetchy words, into Crowley's face. All Crowley wanted to do was brand this perfect image into his brain to explore later, at leisure and in complete privacy.

"Hullo, Aziraphale," he said dreamily. "Have I told you how devastatingly attractive you look in white velvet? Makes your complexion glow like--ouch. You didn't have to pinch me!"

"You're just fine, clearly," snapped Aziraphale, sitting up, just before the figures of two pirates turned up outside the door. Crowley's head cleared enough to realise that he was lucky under the circumstances that they hadn't walked in on him lying on the floor with his skirts racked up around his knees and Aziraphale kneeling over him. Then shivered at the thought of what they would have looked like. Bless bless bless.

"Hello again, Charlie. Nice to see you're safe," Aziraphale said amiably. "Oh, and Crowley, let me introduce Ignatius, my quartermaster."

Crowley looked into Ignatius's sunburned face and cold grey eyes and felt a flicker of recognition. This wasn't some good-natured rescue from a ship he had been shanghaied into in the first place like Charlie. This was a man who had made his way into piracy as a murderous halfway house on his road to Hell.

"A pleasure," Crowley said, looking at the creature who was Aziraphale's second in command and resisting the urge to shift into serpent form to rear up protectively between them.

"Thought I should come," Ignatius said, his voice a rumble like muted thunder. "Seeing as enforcing the codes and punishments is my role and all."

"Very good, very good," said Aziraphale. "First, however, I would like your report on the raid."

"It went terrifically, Captain!" said the enthusiastic Charlie. "They fired two cannon shots, didn't go anywhere near us, and then they unconditionally surrendered."

"A rich haul, Captain," Ignatius said. "About twenty hundred guineas, if I'm not wrong."

"And how many joined the crew?" Crowley asked.

Ignatius glared at him through sharp brown eyes, as if daring him to ask why he thought he could question them. The friendly Charlie, however, said, "All thirty of them agreed to sign the articles and fight for us! Isn't it marvellous?"

"I see. And how many pirates in your merry band?"

"About three hundred," sighed Aziraphale.

"No wonder they surrendered. Well, then. That would be..." Crowley calculated with a mind used to weighing up sins and souls. "Well, you would have made about seven pounds each from the attack. Assuming you're all halfway to your thousand pounds, though, you've lost about 45 pounds each on this attack. Well done."