Disclaimer: I own neither Aziraphale nor Crowley, nor any of the rare first editions or highly alcoholic beverages that would tempt them to come visit.
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Crowley was lying on his couch, passed-out-drunk on stolen alcohol, when the frantic knocking started on his door. Again. You'd think that the Gestapo would have known by now that (a) he was on their side (more or less), and (b) he absolutely detested¹ being woken up at two in the bloody a.m. You would also have thought that the Jewish and Romany refugees would have caught on to the exact same facts. And yet, without fail, ever since that nutter Adolf Hitler had decided to go for ethnic cleansing, every night, somebody would come knocking on his door at two in the bloody a.m. If he had any confidence in the angel's ability to be devious, he would have blamed Aziraphale.²
Incidentally, the frantic knocker was Aziraphale.
"What are you doing here, angel?" Crowley grumped.
"They're burning books." The angel looked thoroughly upset, and the demon thought it served him right.
"So? Books burned at Alexandria, and you didn't come knocking at my door at two in the bloody a.m. then."
"That was different!" Aziraphale wailed. "That fire started accidentally! It was ineffable! And anyway, I was allowed to rescue some of them! But they're burning rare first editions, and it's as human as the inquisition was!"
"Well, there's only one thing for it, then." Aziraphale looked at Crowley, hope rising. "We get drunk."
"That's it? That's all you can think of? No... no grand scheme to go in, pistols blazing, and save the day, or rather the books?"
"That's more your style, isn't it? Or somebody else's, maybe, but not mine. But I haven't had a proper sleep in a month and a half; I'm drunk and have no intention of sobering myself up unless you're planning to join me on my return to this curs- bles- this excellent state; and, oh yes, I'm a demon, and am supposed to be opposed to everything you support and vice versa." He looked at the angel and wiped some of the bleariness from his eyes. "Look, I felt the same when Rome got sacked and my favourite vineyard was destroyed, alright? You know what I learned?" Aziraphale shook his head. "Pain's better when you're too drunk to feel it. So when you're sitting there watching your precious first editions burn, watching the pages go up like butterflies made of ash and lasting just long enough for you to see them before they disappear, I suggest you have more alcohol running through your veins than blood. So," he said, pulling a couple of glasses and some whiskey out of thin air. "Drink?"
Aziraphale hesitantly took the glass, drank his shot, and sighed. After a moment of silent, steady drinking, Aziraphale turned to Crowley and said, "That was rather poetic of you."
"What was?"
"The part about butterflies made of ash."
"Oh. Actually, I was being literal."#
And they sat and drank in the silent companionship of loss as the first editions burned at two in the bloody a.m.
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¹ Crowley, and most other demons, hated nearly everything on general principle, but Crowley loathed being roused before the sun was even more than he hated everything else.
² It wasn't, in fact, Aziraphale's fault. A self-styled Jewitch³ decided that the Eugenics movement was Infernal in origin and, upon finding the only demon in all of Berlin, decided to cast a spell to punish him. She wasn't very talented, so all she could manage was to have him woken up every morning at two in the bloody a.m. Incidentally, the spell wore off the day Hitler died.
³ Jewish Witch.
It was American, actually.
Or rather, out of a bar in the Southern United States, causing a bar fight when the barkeep noticed that his whiskey had gone missing. The brawl left three men injured, one dead, and twelve angry.
# Lies. He actually was being poetic.
