The world had just experienced the most anti-climactic apocalypse in the history of, well, history, and Crowley, rather, than be delighted at the amusing upset it had caused amongst the higher-ups, felt muddled. And drunk. Mostly drunk.
He was on a scale – a slippery, slidey scale – of drunkenness competing with the state of being muddled. Until two drinks ago, muddled had been winning by a landslide. He wasn't sure he'd ever been so intoxicated before, actually, and it was interesting the things he found himself hyper-aware of and the things he failed to notice altogether. The carpet in his flat, for instance, was very clean looking. Disconcertingly so. Crowley poured himself another scotch, sloppily. He then poured it onto the floor. The stain it created bloomed outward like a jungle flower, lush and rich against the white backdrop. Crowley chuckled quietly.
He should have been pleased, he supposed. Things had worked out almost perfectly. No apocalypse meant no messy cleanup, which was nice in and of itself, and the whole thing was such a tremendous PR nightmare Down There that the powers that be had decided to take a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding Crowley's involvement, which spared him a great deal of paper work and unpleasant arse-kissing.1
The only problem was that Crowley had, for lack of a better expression, lost his sense of Purpose. Oh sure, drinking was lovely, and eating was fine, and television was easily one of the most entertainingly evil things humanity had ever invented, but it all lacked a certain something. No one had triumphed. There'd been no resolution. Someone2 had hit "pause" on the VCR of the universe, but sooner or later, they were going to finish their ineffable loo break and then, well, there won't be any "then's" left. Crowley seriously doubted whether any other entity in the universe could possibly understand the position he was being put in – the overwhelming relief coupled with a tinge of hopelessness. The idleness of it all.
There was a knock at the door.
"Go away," Crowley shouted, trying not to slur. He could have sobered up, of course, but it'd taken him three days to get this drunk, and he wasn't about to waste his many hours of diligent drinking for the sake of social niceties.
"I'm not going away, Crowley. And if you don't let me in, I'm going to tell your plants you care for them very deeply."
Crowley shuddered involuntarily, but made a vague, sloppy gesture, and the door swung open.
"Really, my dear, miracling the door opened. Since when was sloth your specialty?"
"Sss'not," Crowley said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
"Oh my. Oh my, my, my. Is this all you've been doing?"
"Not all. I did those, too." Crowley gestured towards a series of rather lewdly sculpted shrubs in the corner, which, Crowley assumed, he'd rendered in his drunken angst.
"Oh, that is tasteless. Even for you, my dear."
"Wha? Thought it was funny. 'is funny. You wouldn't know funny if it buggered you up the—"
"Tea?" interrupted the angel, pulling a kettle from a cupboard Crowley didn't remember having.
"Can I put scotch in it?"
"No."
"Can I put it in my scotch?"
Aziraphale sighed in the manner of a patient, yet underpaid, school marm. "No."
"Then no. I'm all set, thanks." He brandished his flask, spilling some on the carpet.
"Alright, that's quite enough. Sober up please, or I am leaving."
Crowley snorted. "Alright."
Aziraphale paused for a moment until Crowley sighed and said, exasperatedly, "Alright, you can leave. I didn't asssk you to come, you know."
"Ah, but I believe I have some information in which you might be interested, my dear."
Crowley eyed the angel warily. He was glowing, which was not unusual, merely irritating.
"What information?"
"Sober, please," Aziraphale said, almost cheekily, as if he were capable of possessing such a quality.
Crowley let out a little hiss of frustration and shook his head a few times. The feeling of alcohol leaving one's system so rapidly never ceased to be an uncomfortable experience. It was like four hours of intoxication condensed into three seconds.
"Heaven has asked me to file a report," Aziraphale said dramatically.
Crowley raised one disbelieving eyebrow in return. "Well. After four millennia of filing reports, that is interesting information. Really, angel. Now, if you'll please hand me that tumbler, I'll be on my way."
"On your way where?"
"I don't know, but you don't seem to be going anywhere, so I thought perhaps I'd got mixed up and this was your flat I'm sitting in the floor of." Crowley made a spectacle of looking around in confusion. "No, wait, you don't seem the type to own an automatic coffee maker. I guess this is my place after all. Goodbye," he added pleasantly.
"Don't you want to know what the report is supposed to be about?" Aziraphale asked with a smile that would have been positively serpentine in any other company.
"Not particularly," Crowley muttered, certain that the angel was going to tell him, regardless.
"You."
"I what?"
"You. It's to be about you. And your – what did they call it? Your F.A.R.P."
"My what now?"
"Your Felled Angel Redemption Potential. It's all the rage up there, it seems. Some up-and-comer has it in his ethereal head that the best way to smite hell is to convince its agents," Aziraphale nodded in Crowley's general direction, "to turncoat."
Crowley was torn between being insulted and laughing hysterically. He settled for something in the vicinity of baffled twitching. "And what's the success rate like so far?"
"There is no success rate," Aziraphale said irritably.
"That's 'cause it's a bloody stupid idea!"
"They prefer 'initiative.' And yes, it rather is," Aziraphale conceded.
"How like a bunch of bureaucratic featherheads to think they can just—" Crowley trailed off into a series of increasingly furious hand gestures.
"That's what I said."
"So why did you take the assignment? I thought you were sort of a freelance angel these days, take the jobs you like and whatnot."
"Because, it is so ridiculous, so outlandishly ambitious that I thought it might appease the powers that be. They're still a bit titchy about our triumphant last stand against the apocalypse, you know."
Crowley nodded.
"At least they're still talking to you," he said, and immediately regretted it when Aziraphale's face went all soft and sympathetic looking, as though Crowley was a wounded kitten in a designer suit.
"My dear, have they still not contacted you? I mean, I realise forgiveness isn't a priority, but you're one of their best agents. Surely they'll have—"
"They haven't, alright? Look, it's not the end of the world—or not anymore, at least."
"What do you think it means?" Aziraphale asked gently.
Crowley sighed heavily and stared at a bit of wall that was remarkable only in that it was not Aziraphale's face.
"It means that either they've decided I've gone native and are giving me the cold shoulder, or they're cooking up some particularly nasty assignment as penance and it's stuck in a bureaucratic pipeline somewhere… festering and whatnot." He shuddered for the second time in a half hour, and wished a painful eternity upon whoever invented the concept of fraternizing with the enemy. He worried that it might have been him.
"Oh. Oh dear," Aziraphale said with vomit-worthy sympathy.
"Don't sigh at me, angel. So I knock around here for a few centuries without an assignment. So what? Who cares?"
"You do, it seems," Aziraphale said kindly, glancing pointedly at the scorch-marks where Crowley had grabbed his sofa in irritation.
"No. I do not. Are we clear?" Crowley said.
"Alright, no need to get all… hot under the collar."
Crowley glared. "Bloody ha. You're a riot. Now, can I please stop being sober?"
"Only if I can join you," Aziraphale said, settling himself on the opposite side of the sofa.
Crowley took a long sip from the flask and wordlessly handed it to Aziraphale, without so much as a glance.
1 Not that there was any other kind in hell.
2 And Crowley had a sneaking suspicion as to whom.