by K.A. Rose

Good Omens characters et cetera are copyright © Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, 1990. Used without permission. Not that I would ever get permission if those two ever knew what I wanted to do with their characters.

Original characters are mine-- vaguely. I really don't care about James or Noelle and Camael is real in Christian mythos.

This story depicts inhuman amounts of alcohol consumption, humorous --but gruesome-- violence, and sexual interaction between two beings assuming male shapes. There is no actual description of sex, thus sparing this story an NC-17 rating, but it still manages a middling-high R. You have been warned.

Additional disclaimers: 1) I am American and 2) I'm not Christian. (If it helps any, I used to be Christian.) I tried keeping things as inoffensive as possible, as accurate as possible (well... as far as anything non-religious went), but, above all, as funny as possible. I'm not sure, but I think there isn't even twenty lines of text between jokes even at the most serious moments. Anyway, if anything in this story bothers you, put it down to the fact that most of it was written on sleep deprivation.

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    Six thousand years ago, a spinning ball of dirt and water came into existence. No one knew why. No one knows now. Most likely, no one will figure it out until the whole thing is destroyed. Some might call that ironic.
    For what it's worth, it's mid-December now, in the year 1999. Insert whatever comments of detached interest or active disinterest as you find necessary. As far as the ball of dirt called Earth was concerned, it was just another year. There was less snow and more rain than there used to be, but what else could you say?
    In the finest tradition of European weather, it was raining in London. It wasn't doing the job wholeheartedly, though, and the sun was peeking out from behind some very resentful gray clouds, dissipating the rain into a light, erratic drizzle. It would probably stop by early evening.
    In Soho, water dripped from the hem of James's coat. He had tried to take refuge under the overhang of a secondhand bookshop. He wasn't sure of its name. No one was. And he was only vaguely aware of what was sold in there because he had never gone in to look at the books. Right now he was waiting for someone. He wasn't doing it very inconspicuously for the reason that he was trying to be inconspicuous about it.
    James had started seeing him around when he started working at the Chinese restaurant a few streets away. Not very tall-- shorter than James, although not by very much. Fair hair; it almost seemed white when he was in the sun. Pale skin. He wasn't sure of his eyes, he'd never gotten close enough to see what color they were, but James bet they were some deep, dark blue. That would look very nice, he had decided. He ran the bookstore James now stood in front of, and even if he didn't care about what sort of books got sold there, James felt the man did a good job of it.
    It was full-blown infatuation, and James was helpless against it. He followed the man every chance that he got, went to the bookstore every day at his lunch break. But sometimes it would be open, and sometimes it wouldn't be. There was no forewarning of it. And even when it was open, there the pale-haired man would be, cataloging and indexing or cross-referencing or moving tomes between shelves. James couldn't muster up the courage to speak to him when he was... was... was like that! What if he broke the man's concentration and got one of those severe looks distinctive of bookkeepers everywhere? What if he got himself branded as an ignorant, classless buffoon and...?!
    He didn't even know the man's name. He'd heard it was something like "Ozzy" but he'd never been able to verify it.
    The sound of expensive shoes on the wet pavement made James look up. His eyes bulged. It was the store owner, walking briskly and unconcerned through the afternoon rain. There was not a drop on him, as if he was moving too fast for it to meet him. He wore white slacks, a blue turtleneck and a white jacket with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. James wasn't a big fan of anything retro, and he had never really cared for Miami Vice, but he had long ago resolved not to hold it against the bookkeeper.
    The pale man held a large shopping bag in each hand, and his eyes were glazed over in the way of one who knew the path to their destination by heart and consciously focusing on it would only cause a distraction.
    He had an unearthly presence about him that James just couldn't place, like he didn't really belong here but people should be thankful that he was. What James didn't know was that there was a grain of truth to that, not having entirely originated from his obsessive infatuation. The bookkeeper now walking towards him was 1) immortal and 2) a minion of the Big Beard in the Sky. This wasn't a new development. It wasn't like "we've replaced Mike's chocolate doughnut with a five-hundred-pound grizzly bear; let's see if he notices." The shop owner had always been an angel, and a lot of other immortals would probably have been surprised he managed to convince anyone otherwise for any length of time.
    His name isn't Ozzy, by the way.
    Arriving at the shop door, he gave no acknowledgment of James, huddled in his coat against the glass store front, while he shifted his bags further up his bare forearms and produced a keyring from a pocket. It only had one key on it.
    The bookkeeper unlocked the door and pushed inward, walking swiftly inside. James moved with a start towards the door and leaned around the frame towards the interior just as the door slammed shut in his face.
    He blinked a little at the "closed" sign hanging in view of the glass panel on the door. His eyes unglazed only after several minutes when a slender hand appeared from within and flipped the sign over to "open"-- rather reluctantly, it seemed. Pausing for a moment while he tried to calm his nerves and then, when that failed, stuff his nerves into a brown sack along with several large bricks and throw it into the river, he opened the door. A small, nondescript chime went off as he entered.
    It was not a very pleasant odor in the shop, being somewhere between mold and cat urine. James found his best defense was to just breath heavily until his nose couldn't recognize it anymore. It became easier with each try.
    "Take off your coat, dear."
    James snapped his head up. Had he actually...?!
    "You're dripping all over. I do try to keep the carpets nice, you know." The bookkeeper emerged from behind the counter, holding a stack of three wooden boxes with hinged lids. He looked disapprovingly at James, in some matriarchal, snobbish manner. If he had had glasses, he would have peered at James over the top of them.
    God, just like the librarian back at school... James thought miserably. But then again, Mrs. Brisby hadn't been a very attractive man.
    James quickly pulled off his coat, holding the soggy garment in his arms while he looked around uneasily. Where was he supposed to put the thing?
    "Coat stand to your right," said the store owner, rummaging for a pen in one of the boxes.
    James looked where directed, and started with surprise. He was sure he hadn't seen the coat stand there when he'd come in before. Ever.
    Oh well. James's mind made excuses for it while he hung his coat up. Then he glanced back towards the counter. The bookkeeper was bent low over one of the boxes, thumbing through a set of index cards. So the man was busy with work again already... James suppressed a sigh, looking despondently at the surroundings.
    Clearly, very few people set foot in the shop. It was not that there was dust; quite the opposite. It was so completely absent of dirt that James had a hard time thinking it was all real. There was something about the shop, like its owner, that didn't seem entirely... corporeal. That was the word, wasn't it?
    This was part of James's infatuation, of course. It all was.
    But the bookkeeper was still engrossed in the index cards, and James was loathe to interrupt him. Hands in his pockets, James started to saunter casually to the bookshelves. The walk, like everything else about him, failed completely at seeming natural. It was probably to James's advantage that the store owner made no acknowledgment of his movements.
    While staring blankly at the spine of Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew: Collector's Edition, James thought: I've got to at least talk to him. How do I know if he's even available otherwise? What if he's not even...
    James stole a glance back at the bookkeeper. But of course he was. With looks and mannerisms like that, how could he not be?
    The pale-haired man scribbled something on one of the index cards and set it aside. Then he began working on the next one.
    It was a big stack of cards, and James's lunch break was nearly over.
    He's probably sick of this sort of work every day anyway, James thought wildly. He turned his eyes back toward the bookshelf, found the thinnest and least impressive item he could find, and pulled it out hurriedly as if trying to beat someone else to it. Then he shuffled his way to the counter. By now the angel had noticed James's movements. That boy again, he thought wearily. If he's trying to purchase the place, he's not giving it a lot of effort.
    "So, eh... how about that new millennium, eh?" James said cheerily as he dared, placing the book down on the white countertop.
    The bookkeeper looked disapprovingly at James with pale eyes. A blue so light it probably counted as gray. How boring. "That isn't until next year, dear boy."
    James floundered for a moment, and then said, "Yeh, of course. I know. It's just, you know, everyone's saying..." He tried desperately to keep the conversation going. "Still, you know, the dates turning over and all... Do you think the world will end? Heh..."
    "I haven't heard anything." And he would have, rest assured. Well in advance, to give him enough time to make some last-minute arrangements.
    James grinned nervously, as one who saw that what little foothold he had managed was disappearing under him. The only thing to do was to plunge on ahead before you could fall. "You never know, though, eh? Say," he said, lightening his tone quite conspicuously, "do you live around here?"
    The bookkeeper gave him an appraising look. Technically he didn't live anywhere, by the normal definition of the word. When he wasn't inspiring good around the country he was usually at his shop, which hardly counted as a place of residence. "No, dear," he said flatly.
    "Oh. Whereabouts do you live, then?"
    "Quite far away." The shop owner was beginning to spot James's motive, and he didn't appreciate it.
    "Must be hell to commute every day, eh?"
    "Not particularly." Nothing was very hellish for him. Except for children's birthday parties.
    Outside, a car's engine stopped purring and its breaks squeaked as it pulled into a space beside the pavement.
    "...Are you doing anything after work tonight?" James asked abruptly.
    Instead of responding, the bookkeeper lifted his head, turning his gaze towards the store front's window, as fixedly as a cat who has heard the jingle of his owner's keys at the front door. James was quite put off by this.
    He looked over in time to see the door open, triggering the chime that sang above his and the shop owner's heads. A tall, tanned man with dark clothes and sunglasses stepped in. Outside, a jet-black, vintage Bentley sat parked in a once-vacant space. At least, James convinced himself it had been vacant. He could have sworn there was a white mini van parked there before and he hadn't heard that one pulling out, but it must have. Obviously. Bentleys didn't just come in and occupy parking spaces they made for themselves.
    It was a very nice car. It looked new.
    He heard the shopkeeper sigh irritably. "You didn't say you were stopping by."
    The new man shrugged. If there was one word to describe him, James thought, it was modern. The man looked like an MTV poster boy, but not overly so that you would have thought he really was. He had so much black on that you started seeing different colors of black.
    The man grinned. He had very white teeth. "'Was in the neighborhood." You could practically hear the subtext, the words behind the words, the ones that weren't voiced because of James's presence.
    Once again, James was wrong to assume the man was human. He'd probably have been very surprised to find that he was looking at a minion of Hell, though.
    James looked between the tanned man and the bookkeeper. His heart sank into his stomach and started deteriorating in the acid. He'd seen that look before.
    "Really," the shop owner said with mock cheer. "And taking an extended lunch break, I presume."
    The tanned figure looked at James. "A customer? That's a rare sight."
    James stammered for a few moments before he realized he had never been asked to speak.
    "Not as such," said the bookkeeper. He looked back at James, smiling with that sort of insincere kindness that was like salt on an open wound. "You were just leaving, weren't you?"
    James nodded dumbly. His body jerked to life, his hands leaving the counter like it was white-hot. He began walking stiffly towards the door, keeping his eyes fixed on the tall man. He had a silver belt buckle shaped like a snake. A closer look as he passed the man on his way out showed that it was eating its own tail.
    He grabbed his coat hurriedly from the wooden stand. The door closing behind him as he exited, he heard them say:
    "Really, angel."
    "Now, Crowley, he hardly knew any better."
    James felt like crying.

    Back in the store, Aziraphale went back to his index cards.
    "You've changed clothes again," he observed offhandedly. He couldn't say it with much venom, because so had he.
    "I try to keep up to date." It was said in the voice of one who didn't need to try, but just was by nature.
    "That's an earring."
    "It's stylish, all right?"
    Both beings tried to keep up with human clothing trends. Ideally it was a means of maintaining cover. People started looking at you suspiciously if you went around in a toga, at least if you weren't drunk off your arse at the time. Crowley, in his love for virtually all things human, was so up to date that you could look to him to see what the latest fashion was before it even got to you. Well, as far teen punk culture went, anyway, which admittedly didn't have the same effect on someone with the physical age of about 30.
    He was better than Aziraphale at any rate, who was twenty years behind the flock at the best of times.
    Crowley sauntered over to the counter and rested an arm on it. The book James had placed there previously was gone, as was the coat stand by the door.
    "How about that new millennium, eh?"
    "Oh, quiet."
    "You have to admit, all of this hysteria is pretty funny. You should see what it's like over in America." Crowley nearly started snickering just thinking about it.
    "One of yours?"
    "No. Humans are doing this all themselves."
    Aziraphale eyed him suspiciously. "What about that new insect that they're all talking about?"
    "Happy accident, actually. Come on, you can't honestly expect we could have anticipated something like that all those years ago."
    "I suppose not." Aziraphale straightened the stack of cards and fitted them back in their box. He leaned forward on the counter and stared straight at the demon. Their heads were very close together. "Why are you here?" And for the first time, he noticed the scent of styling gel in his hair. He had wondered how the demon had gotten his hair to stick up in spikes like that. That was a new feature, as far as Aziraphale could tell: the last time he'd seen Crowley, his hair had been longer and --how could he put it?-- fluffier.
    The demon shrugged, leaning back a bit. "As I said, I was in the neighborhood. It has been several years--"
    "Nearly a decade, actually."
    "Yeah."
    "For heaven's sake, Crowley, our meetings have always been several decades apart. We didn't see each other at all during the nineteenth century," he added pointedly. "Either your side is planning something or human time sense is getting to you, dear."
    "Why would we plan something now?" Crowley looked offended. "It'd be too obvious."
    The angel had to concede this. It was the logic Above as well as Below: why bother putting on a show when everyone expected you to?
    But then what did that leave? "I won't cover for you, whatever you've got going. I really am too busy as it is. All these, these..." Aziraphale shook his head before he could swear, "...these Christmas miracles, you know. We never have enough people on the job."
    "I'll be blessed. You people still do those?"
    "A lot fewer than we take credit for," the angel admitted.
    "And I'm not asking you to cover for me," Crowley said.
    "What, then?"
    The demon smiled, not altogether devilishly. He said in a low voice, "Can I tempt you to dinner?"
    Aziraphale didn't appear very warm to the idea. "We've gone out three times in the past twenty years, and two of those were in 1990. Isn't that enough for you?" Leave it to Aziraphale to completely fail to acknowledge the near-Apocalypse that had gone on that year.
    "You don't like going out to eat?" the demon asked innocently.
    "You just like to get me drunk."
    "I also like getting myself drunk. Come on, fair's fair."
    "Well... Not the Ritz again."
    "Fine."
    A young woman attempting to open the door of the shop found it bolted.

    They looked up at the club sign, lit up in brilliant cherry neon lights.
    "I thought you said this was a French restaurant," Crowley said lamely.
    The techno music currently throbbing from within did not suggest this.
    "Oh dear. I was worried it may have been sold since the last time I was here."
    And the bouncers were starting to eye them suspiciously. There was something inherently untrustworthy about two men appearing in their thirties, one of which appeared to have been frozen in time for two decades.
    "When was the last time you came here?"
    "Last week."
    "Oh." It wasn't really the answer Crowley had been expecting, but it fit well enough.
    He didn't take his eyes off the sign. He wasn't against clubs as a rule, he just found it hard to like most of them. The music always seemed to suck and it was more hassle than it was worth to bewitch the deejay's records every time he switched them.
    The last time he was at one, a girl had even asked to dance with him. Well, fair enough, nothing wrong with working in some seduction even on your off time, but she'd been wearing enough black make-up to wade her feet in, and Crowley hadn't been able to help noticing the inverted pentagrams and gothic crosses strewn all over her like a badly decorated Christmas tree. It was enough to repulse any minion of hell.
    Still, how often did you get an angel this close to a dance club? It wasn't an opportunity to be missed. Anyway, it wasn't like the drinks would be bad. The two could just change them into something they liked.
    Aziraphale sighed. "Well, I suppose there is that sushi bar down on--"
    "What's wrong with here?"
    "...What?" The angel turned towards him. "Come off it. If nothing else, we'd both be very out of place." Aziraphale hinted that was the very least of the issues at hand, and any further infraction on Crowley's part would result in Aziraphale listing them, heaven forbid.
    The angel was never very good at threats.
    "We could age regress a couple of years. I really don't think it's necessary, though," Crowley said thoughtfully. He glanced over at the shorter being. "As for your clothes..."
    He raised his hand, positioning his index and middle fingers against his thumb. Aziraphale's thin hand clamped down on Crowley's before he could do any more.
    "Don't you dare snap," Aziraphale hissed furiously.
    Crowley shrugged. "It's only a formality anyway."
    Frozen still, his mouth a thin, terse line, Aziraphale studied his companion's face. He wished he could see behind those stupid glasses. And then, quite hesitantly, he glanced down. And gasped.
    It was not, strictly speaking, a major alteration. The white pants were baggier than Aziraphale remembered, his blue turtleneck had transformed into a nondescript black T-shirt and his white jacket had turned into a white trenchcoat. With the sleeves rolled down. Crowley had seen to that.
    Aziraphale seethed.
    There was something more important than the clothes themselves, and it was the fact that Crowley had crossed The Line. It was a very important line, and it was there for the purpose of not getting crossed. Absent morals --or at least respectable ones-- as the demon was, it was nevertheless well understood that neither of them were to use their powers on one another without permission. It wasn't out of fairness, just a respect for personal space.
    Aziraphale was familiar with smiting. It was part of the job for most angels. And he'd smitten quite hard in his day. But right then the only thing the angel wanted to do was to punch Crowley. Very, very hard.
    He took several deep breaths instead. Then he snapped his own fingers. His old clothes reappeared in what would have been the blink of an eye, if Crowley blinked.
    They stared angrily at each other. You could almost see the lightning crackling between them from all the tension. Crowley was starting to hiss.
    In the space of an eyetwitch and a miniscular sigh, Aziraphale gave in. He closed his eyes meditatively. "If I recall, we were intending on getting drunk."
    "We should be drunk already," the demon agreed, nodding. They looked again to the club entrance. "What the heaven. Let's try it."
    The two immortals climbed up the steps to the doorway. Neither of the bouncers seemed at all concerned with how Aziraphale had gone through spontaneous clothing changes twice. It wasn't something that could logically happen, and the human response to anything of that nature was to reason that it hadn't happened. It often served as a defense mechanism.
    Without any word or gesture of acknowledgment to the bouncers, Crowley and Aziraphale stepped inside. Lines were something that happened to other people. The two muscular men at the door shifted slightly as their eyes unglazed, and went back to checking IDs.
    The manifested bodies of abstracts are particularly resistant to damage. This was fortunate because otherwise the two's eardrums would have burst the second they stepped into the building. As it was, their heads hurt a lot. So did every bone in their bodies, which were rattling in time to the beat.
    "Let's find a table," said Crowley. It may have surprised the average onlooker that 1) he did not yell and 2) Aziraphale heard him perfectly, thus negating the typical five-minute interlude of shouting "WHAT?!" at each other. Demons didn't need air for their voices to travel.
    From the entryway, they descended a riveted sheet metal staircase, which supposedly was meant to be stylish. Aziraphale thought it looked like a tetanus hazard.
    Below them was what could only be called a mass of people. It was only spared the term of "sea" because it was too small, but at the very least it looked like a very large lake of jumping, convulsing bodies, clad in black and other dark shades, only shadows until the red strobe light flickered them into being. It looked like something Crowley had crossed on boat a few times, only the people there hadn't been quite so energetic.
    They sighted the tables, back along the far wall. There was a table of two mysteriously vacant among the crowd of drinkers. There was always a table of two set aside when Crowley and Aziraphale wanted it.
    Someone ran into Aziraphale as they neared the table area. It would have been better to say that they had barreled into him, but you have to be more polite about it because it was a girl. Flailing his arms to keep his balance, the angel found himself face to face with a young, gaunt woman with far too much metal attached to her skin. She grinned brightly and he was able to smell the liquor on her breath before his nose began to shut down completely.
    "Hi! Do you want to dance?" she shouted above the music.
    Perhaps she knows how to gavotte, Aziraphale thought wildly, forgetting himself mostly in the nausea the smell was causing. He smiled politely. "Why, yes, I--"
    A broad hand clamped down on his shoulder. Crowley's. "No, you don't," the demon said firmly, pulling Aziraphale back slightly. The girl with enough piercings to change the polarity of the Earth slumped in disappointment, and turned abruptly. Her skirt might have flown as she did this, except it was too short to catch the air necessary for this. She stomped off into the crowd as effectively as five-inch heels would permit. A little later she'd be complaining to her friends about "why the cute ones were always that way."
    Crowley spun Aziraphale around and, with his hand across the angel's back, led him to their table in the corner. "You know as well as I that that was an act of good will. I don't want to talk about it, so don't you ever bring it up."
    "I fail to see how--"
    "I was sparing that girl some misery." They sat down. The table was long rather than wide, with the intent that the seated would like a good view of the dance hall, so the two chairs were next to each other along the back wall. "Anyway, if you're going to dance with anyone, you're going to dance with me, all right?"
    "I'll take that to mean I can't dance at all," said the angel, sounding resentful. "Shall we just proceed to inebriate ourselves, then? Garçon..." he called, raising a hand.
    Crowley disliked being misinterpreted, and was about to say, "No, I'd just prefer to stop you from going off and embarrassing yourself" but was cut short at the arrival of a skinny, pimply boy wearing mostly black fishnet. He set two glasses of indistinguishable brown liquid down on the table with a heavy plunk.
    The demon looked at it distastefully. The glasses were clean but that was about all you could say for them. "Remind me, for my mind is drawing a blank... Why did we pass up the Ritz?"
    "If I recall, you were the one that insisted we--"
    "Yeah, yeah." He picked up one of the glasses and examined it. As the liquid swirled in the glass, it found itself turned from watered-down beer to a fine vintage wine. There was no helping the container, sadly. Crowley took a long sip, easing back into his chair.
    "Should have gotten a bottle," Aziraphale muttered, doing likewise with his own drink. "It's easier to keep going that way." For them, a bottle never ran dry unless they wanted it to. It was the same thing as with a glass, actually, but a lot less difficult to keep up.
    Within moments, the skinny waiter brought by a nondescript green bottle. It could have contained anything, although it was bound to be at least vaguely alcoholic. Not that it mattered to them, of course.
    "How have things been?" the angel asked, after they'd both finished their first glass and were pouring the second.
    "Ngh. Always the same, I suppose."
    "Any big projects?"
    "Not many. How about you?"
    They started their third glass.
    "Nothing to really boast about."
    "Really. That's a start," Crowley said cheerfully. "Let's hope for more of the same of that, then."
    "There's nothing wrong with a bit of pride."
    "Ah-ha," said the demon, shaking his hand a little. He'd forgotten that it was the one holding his glass and nearly splattered wine over his black jeans. "Ah-ha. For you it is. One of the seven deadly sins, pride." Crowley was not one for nitpicking detail. He'd forgotten most of the things a demon was "supposed to know", except for the things that helped him out. But small things like the lists tended to stick in the memory.
    Well, mostly.
    "You're vain, too, you know," he added.
    "Vanity and pride are the same thing."
    Fourth glass now.
    Crowley gave this careful consideration. "No. No, not really. Same basic idea but--"
    "I mean, they're the same in the list. You could use 'em interchangeably, pride and vanity. Same with... well, there's a couple." He scraped for one. "Avarice. S'also known as greed."
    "You're greedy, too."
    "No, I'm not," the angel croaked, like it had been a deep-seated offense.
    "Yes, you are. Back when you had all those prophecy books you kept collecting and you wouldn't sell 'em..."
    "If they were really determined, I didn't stop 'em," Aziraphale said pleadingly. As he poured his fifth glass, he added bitterly, "Anyway, they're all gone now." He massaged his forehead with his free hand. "Do you know how many years I'd been collecting those?"
    "S'just books," Crowley tried, sounding desperate.
    "Some bloody good books!" Aziraphale moaned, sniffling. "Some of them the only copies left anywhere, and now they're gone too. Popped out of existence. After I'd been tending to them for so many years..."
    Crowley raised an arm --with some effort, because it seemed to have gained weight over the course of the discussion-- and put his hand firmly on the angel's shoulder. "Books," he insisted.
    Aziraphale nodded glumly towards his drink. "'Spose you're right... But..."
    The next song started up. As the melody became apparent, cheers went out throughout the crowd.
    ...I was dreamin' when I wrote this forgive me if it goes astray but when I woke up this mornin' coulda sworn it was judgment day...
    Aziraphale and Crowley looked at one another. They grimaced. If either had been the tabletop role-playing sort, right about now one of them would have shouted "Power word: Kill."
    ...cuz they say two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time so tonight I'm gonna party like...
    Roughly a second later, the record on the deejay's mixing table spontaneously combusted. The screech of the needle filled the dance hall. There were groans and complaints among the not-quite-a-sea of humans, but Crowley smiled, laughing silently.
    "Why, angel..."
    "I severely dislike that song," Aziraphale said haughtily.
    It was a shared sentiment. Crowley just hadn't expected Aziraphale to get to the record first.
    Meanwhile, a rather flabbergasted deejay managed to find another suitable record, and had put it on with a hurry. Another small shriek from the needle, and popish techno throbbed in the air once more.
    After a few moments, Aziraphale frowned. "Why is it in Japanese?"
    "No idea," said Crowley, filling his glass. The drinks from the bottle were getting progressively more toxic.
    Angels, good and evil, spoke and understood all languages. So while the lyrics of the song were lost on most of the dancing humans, Aziraphale covered his mouth in shock, blushing.
    "Oh my. They can say something like that with a straight face?"
    The demon poured the angel his drink as well. This was met with some difficulty because he was laughing while he did so. "Probably not," he said, snickering.
    They drank some more. A lot more. Whole hours passed. If it weren't for the fact that they were too lazy to call the waiter again instead of just wishing the bottle full all the time, they'd probably have been able to calculate that they were well on their way past drunkenness into more colorful, animated states of inebriation.
    A thought kept creeping up on the demon Crowley, and each time it did he drowned it with another glass. The amount of liquor he consumed in doing this was probably enough to kill an ox, but it kept on coming back, the bloody thing.
    A sober observer probably would have noticed the flaw in this. But if there were any left in the club at that point, none of them were going near the two beings in their shady corner. The laughter was beginning to disturb some of them.
    It may have had a lot to do with the fact that the joke being responded to was so old that most, if not all, of the patrons would have failed to understand what had been said, but not many could have picked up on this. The Plan B theory was that the pair was just laughing at everyone's expense.
    Aziraphale clutched on to the table for support. His sides ached, and he had tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Crowley had bent double, bracing himself on his knees. Eventually he fell off his chair. Aziraphale clamored to help him up, mostly succeeding only in knocking their glasses of tequila over. It wasn't a huge loss; the stuff would probably have had little effect on them anyway.
    When Crowley got into his chair again, his laughter subsided enough for him to say, "...Donkey! Th'donkey! I'fergotten abou' th'...!"
    Rest assured, this was immensely funny in context. Sadly, immortals are victims of "you had to be there" moments more than most people would realize.
    Their guffawing died down after a while, and the two beings stared at the liquor-stained table. The techno music still persisted in the background, but it seemed muted now.
    Aziraphale picked up his felled glass and the green bottle and began pouring out... well, something at least. Probably something that wasn't going to kill him outright.
    Crowley just stared at the angel. He was experiencing some sort of liquor-enduced haze that blurred edges and made movements seem slow.
    The Thought was creeping up again.
    His long-time adversary was drinking something bubbly and gabbling nonsense at him. He couldn't have understood the words if he tried. The angel's chatter was interspersed with small, fitful chuckling. It stirred something deep in Crowley he thought he'd killed off long ago.
    The feeling that had went away once the Arrangement was agreed on.
    Ah yes, that feeling. The same personal dedication that demons like Hastur and Ligur had for the souls they tried to taint. The same single-minded devotion to destroying one thing, and by any means necessary.
    It wasn't that you hated the person. Far from it. They were your obsession. It just happened that your one goal in existence was to ruin them. That was what his relationship with Aziraphale had once been like.
    Crowley reached up a hand and gripped Aziraphale's chin gently. His index finger stroked the soft underside. He was aware that Aziraphale had gone very quiet and still.
    Vanity, Avarice and Wrath had not made the angel fall.
    Crowley leaned towards him, parting his own lips.
    Let's see what happened with Lust.

    There's a certain saying about romance that might apply here.
    Except that, generally speaking, the first and third lines aren't true.
    But it's a nice saying anyway.

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