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Professor Anthony J. Crowley leant back in his chair and put his feet on the desk, in his hand the megalodon tooth he carried around as a good luck charm. "It's a brilliant idea, don't you agree?"
His colleague, Professor Aziraphale Eastgate, peered at him silently, his brow furrowed in a way that indicated he was about as far away from agreeing as was humanly possible.
“I suppose…” he said, quietly.
"C'mon, angel, you know it will be a riot! Just imagine the looks on all those stuffy faces!"
Aziraphale was tempted. He could imagine their faces (vividly) and the university board’s possible future chagrin even gave him satisfaction (though he would not admit that of course).
Aziraphale sat on the desk and looked at Crowley. “How are you going to present it to the board?” He asked.
"With utmost gravity," Crowley said and winked. "Leave it to me, angel."
The following weeks Aziraphale observed his husband gleefully working on his prank project. Meanwhile, he quietly started working in their pottery shed. He looked at the unformed clay. What would a group of dinosaurs make?
Crowley had been the one behind the ever constantly changing design of the spinosaurus, each proposal more convoluted than the last. Aziraphale wondered if anyone was going to buy into his new theory of sea-farring T-Rexes. As much as he loved this man, Aziraphale wished he had stuck to fossilized plants instead.
He had started with plants -of course he had- , until one day Crowley had thought it would be a clever idea to make a carnivorous plant fossil, with teeth! From that moment on, things had gone downhill.
It was then that Crowley came up to him and presented a 3D printed model of his Tee-Rex (terrible pun on manatees that Aziraphale refused to acknowledge). It was a T-Rex whose bones has been rearranged so that the front legs were much longer than the hindlegs, and Crowley had taken that as an excuse to turn the limbs into flippers.
"Darling," Aziraphale sighed, looking at the model, "they'll never fall for that. The hip joints are entirely improbable."
"C'mon Angel! Where's your imagination?" Crowley pouted.
"My imagination is not the problem," Aziraphale arched a brow and turned the model's legs. "It's Mr Archer. He won't fund our trip to the coast if we can't convince him there's something worth digging for."
Crowley leaned forward, "Angel, what if I told you someone has already found one?"
"I'd say you were pulling my leg." Aziraphale raised his most sceptical eyebrow. "We would know. The University would know. The world would know."
Crowley tapped the desk lightly. "Funny thing about the world, angel... it doesn't always announce when its found something mysterious."
Aziraphale pursed his lips as he contemplated his husband. Crowley had his faint mischief-making smirk, the one that usually preceded his “fuck shit up” jacket coming out of storage and large cheese wheel ( apparently Dubliner by the union bylaws—Aziraphale didn’t ask) purchased for his rat army bonuses.
"I was under the impression we were pranking the museum board with the hope of getting a scenic location for our next exploratory study," Aziraphale drew his eyebrows together. "Are you now telling me, my dear, that we have an actual mystery on our hands?"
Crowley reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He opened it, then slid a map toward him, marked with far too many red circles for comfort.
After examining the red circles, Aziripahle looked sharply at his partner. “The Hebrides? I thought you hated tweed and Scotland is dreadful this time of year.”
Crowley tapped the map. "What matters right now is what's been turning up along this coastline." He then gave a faint huff of laughter. "Although you do look unreasonably good in tweed."
Aziriphale flashed a pleased look from under his lashes. “Ok. What has been turning up?”
"Fossils, Angel." Crowley sighed, sliding the map back into his jacket. "Unlike any that have been seen before. We're going to the Hebrides. I've already sorted travel, we leave tomorrow."
Aziraphale looked glumly at his clay pot collection. He'd been rather hoping "crafting dinosaurs" was on their prank agenda, with a suggested investigation in the South of France. Scotland when the midges were in full force was rather less appealing.
Aziriphale thought a moment, then turned bright blue eyes under full lashes to gaze at his husband. “Can we go by train?” He said hopefully. He had no defense to that look, even when his angel acted the light in his eyes was from the hole in the back of his head.
And so, with tickets in hand and mysteries waiting by the sea, they began an adventure that would be remembered far longer than any prank. In the end, the journey proved worth every single midge.
Art by Catoftheapocalypse
Art by LutrasLutras